Health Service Medical Supplies (Costs) Bill
Monday 23rd January 2017
(7 years, 10 months ago)
Grand CommitteeHealth Service Medical Supplies (Costs) Act 2017 View all Health Service Medical Supplies (Costs) Act 2017 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 81-II Second marshalled list for Grand Committee (PDF, 70KB) - (23 Jan 2017)
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)
My Lords, in the event of a Division in the Chamber, the Committee will adjourn for 10 minutes from the sound of the Division Bell.
Amendment 1
Lord Warner
“Duty to have regard to the life sciences sector and access to new medicines and treatments
In discharging, through the provisions established or amended by this Act, its responsibility to secure best value for the National Health Service in purchasing medicines and medical supplies, the Government must have regard to the need to—(a) support a flourishing life sciences sector within the United Kingdom economy; and(b) to ensure patients have speedy access to new medicines and treatments approved by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence.”
Lord Warner (CB)
My Lords, Amendment 1 is in my name and those of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, and the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley. First, I welcome the Minister to his first health Bill as a Minister. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, will have a great deal of sympathy with his position of having copped the Committee stage of a Bill in which he had had no previous involvement, because I did exactly the same to him when I left office and left him with the Mental Health Bill—having made, of course, an extremely brilliant speech at Second Reading to introduce the Bill.
I sympathise with the Minister’s position, but that does not mean that we will not probe forcefully on a Bill that is definitely a curate’s egg which does not seem to have left the Commons in as improved a state as it might have done. I am afraid that earlier this morning I separated Amendment 1 from Amendments 2 and 4. I hope that that has not caused too much trouble. I wanted to focus in this amendment on life sciences and the PPRS scheme and on their importance.
Amendment 1 is very straightforward. At the start, the Bill lays a clear duty on the Secretary of State, in discharging the Bill’s provisions, to have regard to supporting a flourishing UK life sciences sector and ensuring that patients have speedy access to NICE-approved new medicines and treatments—a subject to which I think we will come back on a number of occasions. As I made clear at Second Reading, the Department of Health Minister with responsibility for the pharmaceutical industry does have to balance a number of factors, and not just get the cheapest drugs for the NHS. This is what I had to do when I had those responsibilities, and the position is the same today, as I understand it. These factors involve the safety and value for NHS money of medicines, but they also involve helping the UK life sciences industry to grow and flourish and securing speedy access for patients to new drugs that have been approved by NICE.
It is clear that the Government have not done a spectacularly good job with their consultation on the Bill in showing that they understand this balancing act. They certainly have not convinced the pharmaceutical industry—hence this amendment at the start of the Bill. Suspicions have understandably been raised by the inclusion of elements in the Bill that were not in the 2015 consultation on the Bill, including enforcement powers for future voluntary pricing schemes that operate outside the statutory scheme. There is also the issue that the range of products covered by the Bill seems to have been extended, along with the disproportionately bureaucratic information requirements that have now found their way into the Bill.
We will come to many of these issues later, but I will focus here on safeguarding life sciences and the PPRS. Why is this so important? I will start with the life sciences issue. The pharmaceutical industry invests more than £4 billion a year in R&D—more than any other sector. It employs 62,000 people, with a geographical spread that is well outside London and the south-east. Pharmaceutical manufacturing employees have the highest gross value added of any high technology industry, at more than £330,000 per employee. One in four of the world’s top prescription medicines was discovered and developed in the UK. It is a very important and powerful industry for this country.
All this will be put at serious risk by Brexit, as the Prime Minister seems to recognise in the new industrial strategy that she announced today. We know the UK will lose the EMEA through Brexit, but Brexit also poses many other risks to the UK life sciences industry, which could lose market access for its products and see a flight of researchers and research. At such a time the last thing the sector needs is a piece of ill-considered legislation imposing unnecessary regulatory burdens—again, something the Prime Minister said in her industrial strategy that she wants to reduce.
As I made clear at Second Reading, I am not saying that the Government should not act to prevent the NHS being blatantly ripped off under the statutory scheme when a branded good comes off patent, as happened with Flynn Pharma and a Pfizer anti-epilepsy drug. The ABPI has never challenged action in cases of this kind. However, the broad wording of the Bill goes well beyond closing this loophole. It gives the Government the power in the statutory scheme to replace a list-price discount system with one in which a company repays the Government a percentage of net sales, with as yet no clear indication of what this level will be. The industry’s concern is that this will create a precedent that could be easily applied to the voluntary PPRS scheme. Ministerial assurances that this will not happen are simply not the same as legislative safeguards. My reading of the Bill is the same as the ABPI’s, namely that this legal precedent could enable a future Government to unilaterally apply the same approach to the voluntary scheme when a PPRS period ends. This would end a negotiated way of setting prices and encouraging research and innovation that has worked well for industry and successive Governments for more than 50 years.
The second leg of Amendment 1 covers the issue of speedy patient access to new drugs. We will come to this matter later on other amendments so I will say little now, except to remind the Committee that we already have a poor record on the take-up of new approved medicines. For every 100 European patients who can access new medicines in the first year they are available, just 15 UK patients have the same access. Even when NICE has approved drugs and treatments, NHS take-up still lags behind. The first page of Friday’s Times showed the sector’s concerns, with one-fifth of new drugs being rationed and drug companies now openly saying they will no longer launch new drugs early in the UK. Whatever we do with other parts of this Bill when we come to them, I urge the Government at this time of great uncertainty for UK life sciences to put at the beginning of this Bill a statement of intent and reassurance of the kind embodied in Amendment 1. I beg to move.
Baroness Walmsley (LD)
My Lords, I support this amendment and compliment the noble Lord, Lord Warner, on his comprehensive introduction of it. I have no intention of repeating everything he said. However, I have a few points. I, of course, support the Government’s intention to try to make sure that the health service is not ripped off, but point out that a very large fine has just been imposed on Pfizer by the competition law regulations in relation to the case mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Warner—so even without this Bill, that is working and we must bear that in mind.
What I am particularly concerned about is the potential effect on the life sciences sector, particularly—as the noble Lord, Lord Warner, said—in the light of Brexit. There are dangers to our markets and to our researchers. Our research is going elsewhere and researchers from other EU countries coming to us are all in danger because of the Prime Minister’s determination to take us out of the single market and the customs union, which I do not believe is what the public voted for.
The particular issue that concerns me is that although we were told in some of the meetings we had that there had been consultation and there will be more consultation before elements of the Bill are implemented, parts of the industry tell us that they are very concerned that they were not consulted. They do not feel that the level of consultation before the Bill is implemented is anything like good enough. We have to support our life sciences industry. We are very good at life sciences. It is one of the things that we can lead—and have led—the world on, but we must make sure that it is not in danger.
The other point is on access to treatments—not just drugs but other treatments. I am told by GPs that rationing is already in place, either by these referral management companies—private companies—that are being placed between the GP and his or her recommendation and the consultant, or by the consultants having pressure put on them to refuse consultation over certain patients referred to them by GPs. We already have rationing and we need to make quite sure that we are not affecting our pharmaceutical industry. We must ensure that our industries involved in research, medical implements, treatments, machines and devices and all those things that we are so good at inventing are not damaged by the Bill. It is really important that we have a statement of intent in the Bill. It will place on the Government the responsibility to make sure that they consider this terribly important sector. I have not had a chance to read the industrial strategy yet, but I would be surprised if the money follows the intent. I do not think that we will be able to look to that for any comfort, so we need this amendment.
Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)
My Lords, I hesitate before speaking about this amendment because I do not profess any particular knowledge of this area. I have not participated before on the Bill because I have been ensconced in dealing with the delights of HS2, but I have a couple of points to make. I am certainly sympathetic to the amendment, but something the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, said worried me. She said that even without the Bill, action is being taken. That does not mean that we do not need the Bill.
My first point is that it took quite a while for this to be exposed. It took the campaign from the Times to bring this to the forefront. Surely one of the questions we ought to be asking is why this was not exposed through the audit processes of the NHS in the first place. These were not small increases: they were staggering. One epilepsy drug that started off for a few pounds went up to something like £67. They were staggering increases—so that is one question for the Minister.
There are clearly differences of opinion about how effective the Bill is at getting the balance right, and that will be tricky. I can understand that listening to the arguments today. Nobody wants to stop the innovative, essential approach of successful British drug companies. That is on one side. But on the other, we have to ensure that the health service and the cost of drugs are protected.
A letter to the Times on Saturday caught my attention. It talked about the importance of clinical pharmacology and focused on the safe, effective and economic use of medicines. A recent report by PricewaterhouseCoopers stated:
“Each £1 spent to hire additional clinical pharmacologists has the potential to reduce NHS costs by almost £6”.
Apparently, there are only 72 clinical pharmacologist consultants working in the NHS. The British Pharmacological Society recommends that it needs a total of 150 by 2025. Without urgent action, therefore, the impact of waste is set to increase, and that surely ought to give us cause for alarm. Again, I am only giving notice to the Minister; he might not be able to give me all the answers to these questions.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)
My Lords, I support this amendment. I have a real concern that the whole process of pricing and costing of drugs is very poorly understood. I was lucky enough to hear a lecture at the weekend by Jack Scannell, an economist who understands quite a lot about drug pricing. He pointed out that there are four reasons why drugs are expensive: one is cost; one is perceived value; another is power; and the fourth is the prize that they can deliver. It is all in a paper that he wrote about the four reasons why drugs are expensive, two of which he labelled as false: the cost and the so-called value. The reason is that a company will start to explore different chemical substances that might have an effect; 90% of these never progress but remain in various test tubes and are stored. One day they might be of use.
The problem then is that, even if they develop something and take it through the different trials, there are fairly arbitrary examples of where the benchmark is set in different sectors. A clear example of this came up with the drug Campath, which came from Cambridge. It was developed for leukaemia, but was found to be remarkably effective for multiple sclerosis. The drug company then withdrew the drug because it was being prescribed off-licence: it was not licensed for multiple sclerosis. It took the trials through, licensed it for multiple sclerosis under a new name—Lemtrada—and the price was much higher because the benchmark of prices for multiple sclerosis was much higher than that for drugs for leukaemia. The chemical was the same. Actually, when a drug goes out and is priced, it really is, in a way, a guess on behalf of the pharmaceutical industry at the outset.
Another problem arises that relates to the importance of having trials in this country. Trials have to be done on the population to which the drugs are going to apply. It is quite interesting that with different healthcare systems, clinicians see patients at different stages of disease, so with a late diagnosis, you might have a much larger disease burden requiring treatment than you would have had if there had been an earlier diagnosis.
If the trials are conducted in this country, therefore, within the NHS and the real care system—the real world in which these drugs are going to be used—and as near as possible on the very population on which they are going to be used, you get the most accurate results. They can guide NICE in determining how effective a drug really is.
If you have a study on a population with a very early diagnosis, and therefore a relatively low disease burden, you might get a false impression of efficacy, which could lead NICE to believe that the drug was being actually more effective than it will turn out to be in our population. The converse is also true.
That leads me to stress the importance of supporting a flourishing life sciences sector, because we need to be developing drugs in this country, within the care setting in which they will be prescribed and for the population to whom they will be supplied. Any attempt at pricing must, importantly, not disincentivise the pharmaceutical industry to develop the 90% of drugs that go nowhere to find the 10% that will go somewhere.
I hope that the Government will take the new clause very seriously, because it signals an important intention up front in the Bill.
Baroness Redfern (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interests as recorded in the register and formally welcome my noble friend Lord O’Shaughnessy as the Minister this afternoon. Although the Bill is modest in size and has few clauses, it will deliver an important role in securing better value for money not only for the NHS but for patients.
Pressures on the NHS increase year on year because of our ageing population, new technology, and development of new procedures with advanced drugs, resulting in an increase in spending over the past five years of 20%. We spend more than £15 billion a year on pharmaceutical products, and we are acknowledged by those companies to be a reference market for many other countries that do not have such a large or well-organised supply chain as we do.
Patients request access to innovative and cost-effective medicines, so the Bill delivers value for money and does not support the drug companies, which have a commanding monopoly position, to push up their prices. I am pleased to see a strengthening of the ability to collect data on the cost of medicines, medical supplies and other related products from across the supply chain, which the Bill would amend by extending the provisions of the 2016 Act.
The statutory scheme has delivered significantly lower than expected savings for the NHS, with concern as to whether competition in the market is sufficient to control prices, so with new powers to be established under the Bill, there will be opportunities for more competition for unbranded generic medicines and to apply price controls for companies that are members of the PPRS. Particularly when companies can charge unreasonably high prices for unbranded generic medicines when competition does not keep the prices down, the Bill closes a current loophole in the legislative framework.
Clause 6 requires information from more producers and companies but, importantly, any information that they supply which may be commercially sensitive cannot be disseminated beyond the prescribed bodies. We may therefore be better informed on a more consistent basis, particularly to assess whether the supply chain as a whole or a specific sector provides value for money for the NHS. The world is changing, and personalised medicine is an important development for us all—but, again, it needs to be delivered both effectively and affordably.
At all times, we must make sure that the UK is seen as an attractive place for the life science sector—research being seen as a vital component in the sustainability of the NHS, as we have heard from previous speakers. To balance the control of the price of medicines and innovation for pharmaceutical companies, there should not be a lack of motivation to invest in the extensive R&D that we all want. In order to stimulate continued investment, it is appropriate for the industry to see a stable marketplace here as significant and important.
If we are to create a level playing field for drug companies, should we not be trying to do the same for patients? I therefore ask my noble friend whether one measure to tackle the issue could be ring-fencing possible rebates or a percentage from the sector to invest in improving access to medicines and treatments—particularly when we read that a fifth of new drugs face rationing under tighter NHS cost-cutting plans. With a budget impact threshold, that has the potential to slam the brakes on the most effective new treatments and technologies just before they get to patients.
Finally, although we promote innovation, that is not only a priority in the NHS for the Government but for many other stakeholders in the industry. As I said, the Bill is modest in size but it carries the opportunity to ensure that this country is not left behind in access to the newest and best treatments, and that it delivers best value for money.
Lord Lansley (Con)
My Lords, I am pleased to have the opportunity to contribute in Committee. I join in welcoming our noble friend the Minister to his new responsibilities on the Bill. I also draw attention to my interests as recorded in the register. I think only one of them might be regarded as specifically relevant to the Bill, although it is a company which would not benefit directly from it.
As the noble Lord, Lord Warner, said, Amendment 1 raises quite a number of issues, which we will have the opportunity to return to on further amendments. If I may be so bold, the structure of Amendment 1 would insert a clause which is really designed to express hope and intention, rather than to provide a statutory provision having any effect. Some of the other amendments would have the necessary statutory effect to back up some of the intentions encapsulated in Amendment 1, but it does no harm to realise what we are trying to do.
On the amendment’s first limb of supporting,
“a flourishing life sciences sector”,
it is a very apposite day as that is one of the clear intentions of the consultation on an industrial strategy. Listening to the reports this morning, it was clear that in so far as there is a focus on sectors where this country has a comparative advantage—I think we were discussing comparative advantage in the Chamber only last week—pharmaceuticals and life sciences is clearly one of those areas.
A number of noble Lords talked about the strength of our research base in this country and, as the noble Lord, Lord Warner, said, the proportion of new discoveries that have emanated from our research base is striking. It is considerably in excess of our relative importance as a market. We are only about 3% of the global market in pharmaceuticals but we have more than 10% of the new chemical entities—and as my noble friend Lady Redfern said, we often represent up to 25% of the international reference pricing. That is one of the reasons why there is a noted sensitivity on the part of the industry about its strength in the UK.
Where the life sciences sector is concerned, from my experience around Cambridge—in my former constituency and where I live—we probably have the strongest cluster of life sciences in Europe. As was raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, when you talk to the industry at the moment its principal concern is simply its capacity to recruit and retain some of the very best researchers and staff. It is often specifically about retaining them and is all to do with the current situation relating to our future relationship with the European Union.
The sector recruits staff from all over the world, way beyond the European Union, but is only too aware of the reaction there has been among its staff—something like 15% of whom are on average from elsewhere in the European Union—to the prospect of our leaving the EU. It is one of those classic situations: if Britain had never been in the European Union, staff attracted from elsewhere within it would have come here understanding under what circumstances they came. Having had the expectation of being EU citizens enjoying access to all the British circumstances, they find the prospect that those might be taken away from them very difficult. It is very important for us to be clear about not only accrued rights but the circumstances in which people come here.
Lord Warner
Will the noble Lord clarify something for me? The point of my amendment was, in a sense, not any particular PPR scheme but the principle of a PPR scheme, which is a negotiation between government and the industry. No one is arguing that the PPR scheme should be set in stone for ever and a day. What the industry is concerned about is that Government are getting ready to impose a system as an alternative to a negotiated system. The amendment is not meant to enshrine a particular PPRS but to encourage the idea of a negotiated deal with the sector. Does the noble Lord accept that that is a good principle?
Lord Lansley
The short answer is yes. We should aim for what is a price paid by the NHS to the industry for the medicines that it uses that is reflective of value and is designed to promote innovative medicines—that is, as we will discuss in a later amendment, those that meet unmet need or add substantially to therapeutic benefit and are not the “me-too” drugs that are very similar to existing medicines but have a slightly different method of operation or delivery. Paying for what innovation gives by way of therapeutic benefit is where we want to be.
However, the amendment is right in the sense that one has to do that alongside supporting the life sciences sector. That is where freedom of pricing at introduction is important. I have accepted the principle of a PPRS which delivers a budget to the NHS and delivers freedom of pricing to the industry. We are not legislating precisely for the structure of the PPRS, but let us assume that those are continuing features. However, through the operation of the rebate or some other means, it seems perfectly possible to incorporate some of the criteria that will be the subject of our discussions on a number of amendments, as is reflected in the second limb of the amendment.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff
The noble Lord referred to me-too drugs. I hope that he agrees that it is important to recognise that such drugs have often been developed in parallel. They do not take a molecule and just copy it; they develop a new molecule or delivery system, often to minimise side-effects and to maximise efficacy. But they also have a production cost behind them. They are not just copies of something previously produced and marketed differently; they have innovation behind them as well.
Lord Lansley
I understand that. There is a perfectly good argument for the benefits that are derived from incremental innovation. Not every innovation is a step change compared to what has gone before, so that is a perfectly valid point. One objective that we should arrive at, as I hope my own Amendment 10 will later reflect, is that the structure of value has to understand what those benefits might look like. New medicines will come through that are similar but are significantly better, for example in terms of compliance for patient populations, because they are administered differently. One might say, “Well, it’s a very similar drug”, but one has to look at what the overall benefit might be, which is part of the value.
Baroness Masham of Ilton (CB)
My Lords, cost-effective medicines which work for patients are vital, but some orphan drugs will cost more. Why are there differences in the pricing of drugs in Scotland and England? Someone must be making a lot of money.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
My Lords, that is a very interesting question. The exchange between the noble Lords, Lord Lansley and Lord Warner, has been very helpful in focusing on the full intent of the amendment. As it is the first day of Committee, I remind noble Lords of my presidency of the Health Care Supply Association and GS1, the barcoding association.
The amendment is essentially about the life sciences sector and the relationship to it of the pharmaceutical and medical devices and technology industry. However, inevitably, as the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, has shown, it is very difficult not to talk also about issues to do with PPRS and access, and I suspect that those other issues will be dipped into in a number of debates.
First, let me say that the Opposition are strongly in favour of closing the loophole that the core part of the Bill attempts to do. We clearly want to see the NHS get value for money and a good deal out of price negotiations with the different parts of industry it deals with in relation to the matters covered by the Bill. My noble friend Lord Young asked some very pertinent questions. The Minister in passing raised the issue of clinical pharmacology. This is a clinical profession that most clearly enables the health services and, indeed, Ministers to understand the true cost effectiveness and value of new medicines.
The UK is a world leader in clinical pharmacology but, because decisions about the appointment of clinical pharmacologists are made by the NHS, we are at risk of losing the whole profession. I was very disappointed that Health Education England proposed to reduce the number of training posts in its most recent consultation. We were very pleased to have a meeting with the Minister’s predecessor, the noble Lord, Lord Prior, on this, and I very much hope that the Government will be prepared to have a look at it.
This debate is about the contribution of the life sciences sector to this country. Briefly reading the consultation passed today on the industrial strategy I noticed that the introduction talks about the UK benefitting from an,
“open economy: pro-competition rules, flexible labour markets, less intrusive regulation”.
The question that one really wants to put, particularly as this is a sort of declaratory amendment is, if that is so, if—as the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, has suggested—the issue of life sciences post Brexit deserves a great deal of consideration, why have the Government brought what is clearly an overbearing regulatory Bill to your Lordships’ House? If ever I have seen an example of gold plating, this is it. We understand the need to close the loophole but I do not understand and I do not think we really saw a case made at Second Reading for why the Department of Health is determined to intervene in this sector in such a wide-ranging way. It is interesting that your Lordships’ Delegated Powers Committee has already pointed out the open-ended nature of the Government’s approach.
It is impossible to look at the health of the life sciences and the health of the pharmaceutical, medical devices and medical technology industries in this country without looking at the crucial issue of access. I know the Minister’s department is in denial about this and feels that access can be constantly reduced and will have no effect on investment in these sectors. I simply do not believe that that is so. The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, rightly said that this is one of the sectors that we want to protect and enhance—but I believe we are at real risk of losing its pre-eminence in this country.
I understand that the Secretary of State is shortly to go to North America to sweet talk the boardrooms of US pharma. I know the noble Lord, Lord Warner, has been there. I have been there, too. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, has, too. The idea that the Secretary of State will not talk about access is naive. Access is a crucial part of investment decisions by these companies in the UK. The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, referred to the proportion of new chemical entities and top 100 medicines globally that have been developed in this country. I understand that it is now down to 14%. That is healthy compared to 3% turnover, but when I was the Minister responsible we were in the 20% to 25% range. So we have a horrendous decline in the influence of the UK sector. My fear is it is going to decline even further in the years ahead.
We will come back to the 2014 PPRS agreement. Potentially, the industry would have funded the widespread use of innovative medicines in the NHS. Between them, however, the Treasury, the Department of Health and NHS England have completely messed this up. We have ended up with the worst of all worlds, in which rationing in the NHS has reached appalling levels: CCGs are making some of the crudest rationing decisions that I have ever seen.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Lord O'Shaughnessy) (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Warner, for his amendment and for the opportunity it has provided to have this discussion. I had a feeling that this one might lead to a wide-ranging debate that would probably go well beyond the remit of the Bill. Indeed, I had that sense when I had meetings with him and other noble Lords. I am grateful to the welcome that has been extended to me and I have been looking forward—if that is the right phrase—to having this opportunity to discuss the Bill.
It is worth stepping back for a moment as we start. I do not know whether the noble Lord, Lord Warner, will agree with the characterisation of this amendment by my noble friend Lord Lansley that it is more of a statement of intent than a concrete desire to change legislation. But, given that that is a decent characterisation, it is worth reprising what the Bill is trying to achieve. There is widespread support for many elements of the Bill.
We need to ensure that we have the right level of information to provide for three things: first, an accurate reimbursement of community pharmacies; secondly, information for price control schemes—and there are a variety of them, as we discussed—and, thirdly, the ability to get value for money and to ensure that, in relation to those instances that end up in the CMA, we are able to do something about them beforehand, because it takes a long time to get to that point. While it is important that that sort of back-stop provision is there—the big stick at the end of the road—ultimately, we do not want to get to that point, as it is an admission that we do not have the system right and have not controlled prices earlier on.
If those are the shared aims of the Bill, it is also important that we will the means. We cannot just say that we do not like these things and then not do anything about them. The question in regard to willing the means—and that is the main question about the Bill, and was so at Second Reading, when I listened as a Back-Bencher—is whether the provisions of the Bill are proportionate. That is the right question; “proportionate” can mean all sorts of things in different contexts, but it can mean proportionate in terms of the burden on firms, proportionate in terms of what it delivers in savings to the NHS, and so on. That is what sits behind many of the amendments that have been tabled by noble Lords, and we will have lots of opportunities to discuss them.
I think it is worth pointing out that the Bill does not introduce any new information requirements to the medical supplies industry, but rather clarifies the requirements and offers reassurances that provisions will be enacted only through regulation, which is a consultative process. Section 260 of the NHS Act 2006 already provides the Secretary of State with the power to make the medical supplies industry keep and provide information —the conception is that this has been extended to that industry. This power has not been used but, as we will discuss later, the instances where unjustified price rises have come about have happened in unbranded generics. That is one reason we are now acting as we are—because we did not have the power in advance. Of course, one can never anticipate all circumstances and instances in which that might happen.
I mention that only by way of a mini Second Reading debate and to reprise the purposes of the Bill and give background. It will also, I hope, give noble Lords an understanding that I know what the pressure points are and understand the balance that we have to draw between the two. As several noble Lords have pointed out, and following historical precedent, my particular policy brief does hold both the responsibility for a flourishing life sciences sector and for medicine pricing and regulation. I am acutely aware that those are two sides of the same coin and can be in tension with one another. The goal is to have a win-win situation in which the NHS gets good prices, new drugs come through the system and the life sciences industry feels that the United Kingdom is a place where it wants to do business. Pricing is one part of that, but there are lots of other factors, such as the ability to carry out clinical trials, R&D, the environment and so on.
While the Government agree with the underlying principles behind the amendment and the two arms of the legal duty, we are not convinced that a legal duty is the right approach. We recognise the vital role that the life sciences sector has in our economy. Thanks to the research and development efforts of the life sciences industry, which contributes £56 billion and tens of thousands of jobs to the UK economy every year, our understanding of diseases and the best way to treat them has improved dramatically over the past 20 years.
As several noble Lords have referenced, the Government launched today a UK-wide industrial strategy, which is a critical part of the Prime Minister’s ambition to build an economy that works for everyone. It is not about picking winners but about making sure that we play to our strengths and build on the comparative advantages that we have. I am therefore grateful for the opportunity to talk about the commitment to the life sciences industry, which I know was one of the intentions of the noble Lord, Lord Warner, in tabling the amendment, and to re-emphasise the Government’s commitment.
The UK has one of the strongest and most productive life sciences industries in the world. Technology and commercial pressures are transforming the field of healthcare technology and the Government’s ambition, as set out in the life sciences strategy of 2011, is to anticipate and react to these changes while building on existing strengths. Innovation, funding for scientific research, aligned regulatory systems and access to the best people and talent all have a role in supporting a flourishing life sciences sector that goes beyond the prices paid for medicines and medical supplies.
In the context of the industrial strategy that was launched today, there will be a sector-specific life sciences industrial strategy to follow in due course. That will be an opportunity to make sure that we are able to address the concerns that exists in the life sciences industry, which are not peculiar to the Bill but are around, for example, the pricing environment and Brexit, which is a continuing concern. It may not always be popular to say so but it is the view of the Government that Brexit offers a number of opportunities as well as challenges. We will be seeking to make the most of those in our own regulatory system and in how we can provide exactly the kind of fertile ground that the life sciences industry needs to flourish in this country. There is a deep commitment to making that work.
I turn now to the second arm of the duty: making sure that the Secretary of State has regard to ensuring that patients have speedy access to NICE-approved medicines. We believe that this duty is also unnecessary. As noble Lords will know, NICE technology appraisals provides robust, evidence-based guidance for the NHS on whether drugs and other treatments represent a clinically effective and cost-effective use of NHS resources. NHS commissioners are legally required to fund treatments recommended in NICE guidance, usually within three months of the final guidance. This legal requirement is also reinforced in the NHS constitution as a right to NICE-recommended drugs and treatments.
We recognise that there is a remaining challenge in encouraging practitioners to use NICE-recommended treatments. The latest data from the innovation scorecard shows that the rate of uptake and utility of new medicines recommended by NICE are increasing. I acknowledge the picture indicating that we are lagging behind where we should be, so there is no complacency on that point. We are working to improve the scorecard to make it a more effective, accessible and useful tool to identify unjustifiable variation in the uptake of innovative new products.
The Government and their arm’s-length bodies are also taking forward a number of actions to improve access to, and uptake of, new medicines. The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency—the MHRA—has initiated an early access to medicines scheme, providing a platform to bring drugs that do not yet have a licence to patients at a much faster rate than before. The scheme is making a real difference, as 25 promising innovative medicine designations and 10 positive scientific opinions have been awarded by the MHRA since the launch of the scheme in 2014. We also have the NHS test beds programme, which is supporting the testing and uptake of innovations across the NHS, and the accelerated access review, which has been published and which the Government will respond to as part of their industrial strategy.
I would also like to take the opportunity to address a number of points raised by noble Lords during this very informative and useful discussion. We will no doubt come back to these things on other amendments. We have talked about CMA fines and what we might do further upstream. There was a question mark over changes to the statutory scheme and whether there had been proper consultation. There will be further consultation on the implementation of the statutory scheme later this year, in addition to the consultations that have taken place. I should also point out that I intend to meet all the relevant industry groups, which I have not had the opportunity to do yet, to make sure that I hear first-hand about their concerns. I am endeavouring to do that in between Committee and Report so that we have the opportunity to have that personal dialogue—one that will reflect on the decisions we make today and on Wednesday about what the right approach is.
As the noble Lord, Lord Young, said, there is a case for action here. The question is always whether what we are doing is proportionate, so I thank him for that support. I was not aware of the issue about clinical pharmacology and will certainly look into it. If he and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, would like a meeting about this to help me understand that better, I would be delighted. It is clearly an important part of having the right approach.
The work on antimicrobial resistance is being taken forward with great gusto by my colleague the Chief Medical Officer, Dame Sally Davies. She generously gave me a copy of her own book to read about that the other day—which I dutifully did, quickly, so that I could answer questions on it. We are putting forward a candidate to run the World Health Organization, Dr David Nabarro, who is deeply committed to this. We obviously hope that his candidature will be successful. I reassure the Committee that that work very much goes on.
The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, asked about the nature of the pricing and control scheme. I am grateful to her for sharing her knowledge in a personal meeting. There is a tension between getting the right deal and disincentivising investment in the life sciences. It is always a fraught point—as my noble friend Lord Lansley said, every time we have one of these negotiations the balance is slightly different—but I am aware that it is an important balance to strike throughout.
I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Redfern for her support for the Bill and for the importance of driving value. We will have an opportunity to discuss ring-fencing shortly. I do not want to get ahead of myself on that, but we will address it. I had the great pleasure of working for my noble friend Lord Lansley when the Conservative Party was in opposition and I know that he has been very committed for a long time to value-based pricing and getting a good deal. I am grateful for his knowledge on that. Again, we will have the opportunity to talk about those things in a group of his amendments, so I do not want to spend any more time on that.
The noble Baroness, Lady Masham, asked particularly about pricing differences in England and Scotland. I think that we will address that at a later point. There are differences in how drugs are priced according to packs versus units, the starting point and so on. The picture is quite good when you look at it in the round for particular products, but I would be delighted to discuss that with her further, if she wants.
Finally, on the questions raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, I have tried to express again why we think that the Bill is necessary. The noble Lord talked about the open-ended nature of the Bill, which we will look at in amendments at the end of the process. Clearly, we do not want a declining UK sector or rationing. That involves, first, a proper life sciences industrial strategy, which we will have. I would like to think that that is not just the preserve of the governing party but something to which all parties would want to contribute. I look forward to working with noble Lords, who have tremendous experience in this area, to gain their ideas to help us with that.
We also need to drive access through the system. That is one part of an industrial strategy. It cannot be done just by diktat. We rightly put clinical decision-making at the centre of our system, but there are things that we can do beyond what we are currently doing to improve access, which I would be delighted to talk about and work on further with noble Lords as we draw out that life sciences strategy.
I apologise for the slightly long contribution, but I wanted to take the opportunity to respond to noble Lords and to set the scene. While we support the principles of the amendment on the duty, I do not believe that the aim is best achieved through having a legal duty. I ask the noble Lord to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff
Let me thank the Minister for that comprehensive reply and for his openness in discussing things with us all. He talks about having discussions with the industry. I hope that he is aware that there is a move by the industry to consolidate into three major hubs, or potentially four. The fourth would be the Oxford-Cambridge-London axis, the other three being those in Boston, in California and in Basle in Switzerland. We are at a critical time, because a lot of change is going on—hence the motivation for so many of us to support the amendment, as we are aware that things are potentially fragile.
Lord O'Shaughnessy
I thank the noble Baroness for that point, with which I completely concur. This is obviously a big moment in time, for several reasons. Our current price regulation systems for pharmaceuticals run until the end of 2018 and, in 2019, we will leave the European Union. These things are bundled together and co-dependent; making the right decisions on each of the factors will have a knock-on effect on the rest. I very much understand the point. As I said, my job has the tension of both responsibilities, including health, and the trick is to square the circle.
Lord Warner
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for his response but I was not convinced and I am not sure that the industry will be convinced. Over time, the industry is seeing the legal requirement to implement NICE being watered down by NHS England in effect introducing a cost-control system on top of the legal requirement. It is seeing the Government fixated with cost rather than innovation and patient interest. Companies are seeing their investment drop and their involvement in this country being called much more into question by their boards. That is the issue. It is not about whether the Minister can convince me or this Committee; it is whether he can convince the outside world in this sector. At the moment, I am inclined to pursue this on Report, but in the meantime I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
“( ) After subsection (1) insert—“( ) In exercising functions in relation to the controls on the cost of health service medicines established under this section, the Secretary of State must ensure that any payments made by manufacturers or suppliers to whom the scheme relates which fall under subsection (1)(b) are utilised solely for the purpose of reimbursing the National Health Service for expenditure on medicines and medical supplies.””
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, in moving Amendment 2 and speaking to Amendment 4, I will inevitably go over some of the same ground, but I will try to make my remarks briefer than I would have done. I just want to pick up what the noble Lord, Lord Warner, said. The Government have a hell of a job to do to convince these boardrooms, which are no longer much based here. Even the two British companies essentially take global decisions. A lot of work has to be done to convince them that, in the current situation, continued and improved investment will be worth their while.
The Minister may not know this, but there has been great reluctance on the part of his department to talk properly to the industry on these issues, because of this absurd idea that access is a matter that it will not discuss. He may also not know that NHS England is being obdurate about being prepared to discuss these matters in an open way with the industry. I have been astonished by the difficulty that these huge companies have had in getting through the door of NHS England to discuss these matters. This is a serious issue. We would not pursue it unless we thought that we were reaching a critical point in the future of a hugely important sector. I have a sense that because the funding of the NHS so dominates everything that the department does, it then cannot talk about access because it is seen as a cost pressure. I understand that, but it is such a short-term view. We are at risk of making the wrong decisions.
My two amendments are the nearest I can come to the creation of a ring-fenced fund, as suggested by the noble Baroness, Lady Redfern, given the constraints on drafting amendments. That is essentially what I aimed to do: to say that the rebates are for investing in new medicines, devices and technologies. That is the heart of what we seek to do because I still believe that the 2014 PPRS agreement was a golden opportunity to get the best of all worlds—a brilliant life sciences sector, industries investing in R&D and NHS patients getting speedy access to these new developments. But we have not got there yet and that is why this debate is so important.
The Minister mentioned a number of encouraging developments, including the rapid access review, but he must know that there is a general cynicism among anyone involved in earlier discussions about the outcome being a pale shadow of what it could have been. We know that it will really cover only a limited number of medicines and treatments. Equally, the Minister mentioned NICE. It is true that there is an order, which I introduced way back, because of concern that primary care trusts were not implementing technology appraisals effectively enough. But we are seeing a chipping away at even that rather imperfect approach to try to get the NHS to do what legally it should have done, which is enthusiastically to embrace NICE’s technology appraisals.
The department has allowed NHS England to ride roughshod over it in relation to NICE. The latest consultation by NICE, imposed on it by NHS England, to put an arbitrary cap on NICE decisions, coupled with the introduction of a threshold for rare diseases of the £100,000 figure, is putting a triple jeopardy into the system. When it is investing billions of pounds in a new drug, the industry has the NICE process to face; it then has to face the arbitrary imposition by NHS England of these further restrictions; it then gets down to clinical commissioning groups, which in recent months have made some extraordinary decisions in relation to rationing in general and specifically on some of these new medicines. It is very worrying indeed.
I think that the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, hopes the Government might give an outline of their strategy for future voluntary agreements with industry—if there are to be such agreements in future—that embrace the issues of investment, access and value. I am sure that that is very sensible. In the meantime, I am convinced that the only way in which the NHS will start to invest properly, so that its patients come at least somewhere near to the kind of access that we see in other European countries, is by some ring-fenced money being found to finance it. There is no chance of access being improved on the current funding arrangements. NHS England, whose approach is simply to look to control budgets, seems to have no interest whatever in the issue of access. My amendments suggest one way in which we might do that. Ultimately, what I think we all want to hear from the Government is whether they will take a new approach to negotiations which would be about cost-effectiveness and value for money, of course, but takes access almost as its No. 1 aim. I beg to move.
Lord Warner
My Lords, I support these amendments, to which I have added my name. I do not want to go over again what has just been said, but the issue of access is critical. It is why companies have invested in this country. They criticised NICE when it was first set up; they were highly hostile but have been wooed over, have stayed with the game, played in it and continued to make products which are of great benefit to NHS patients. However, having jumped that hurdle they now see a new one, which is driven not by cost-effectiveness but by cost—a straightforward capping of expenditure at an arbitrary figure of £20 million. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, was a little critical of NHS England. I would be if I thought that it was only NHS England but I do not believe that the Government are not behind this, putting pressure on it. We already have a massive difference of view between the Conservative chairman of the Health Select Committee and the Prime Minister over how much extra money has actually been put into the NHS. The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, winces, but such measures are being introduced basically to stop the NHS carrying out a legal obligation to implement NICE recommendations. I totally support the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, because they are a way of trying to ensure that, where repayments are made, they go back to where they should be, which is in the NHS and helping patients to access new drugs.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff
I have added my name to the first of the amendments. I would have added it to the second, but there was not room—there were already four names there. I strongly support them. The debate so far has related to the pharmaceutical industry, to pharmacies—that is, chemists in the community—and to the NHS but these amendments go to the heart of it, which is access for patients.
One problem with what will feel to a patient like almost arbitrary rationing is that they will know that they have a disease or condition and that there is a drug which, if they lived in other parts of the world or had more money, they would be able to access and which, for one reason or another, they cannot. We must recognise that any costing system for medicines is relatively arbitrary and does not cost in all the social costs of disease progression, or of more severe versus less severe forms. Nor does it factor in the cost to the whole family of the distress somebody feels when they need medication and cannot access a drug which has gone through an appraisal process and whose criteria they can see they fit.
I hope that the Minister will look sympathetically at the principles behind this amendment. If you save money but do not put it back into access to medicines, you are effectively bleeding that area to plug other gaps or deficits in the NHS. As for the patient with the condition who knows that there is medication that probably would help them, although they are well aware that they could be a non-responder, no one should underestimate the anguish to them and their families, or the knock-on effect on society in the long term of failing to ensure access to effective medications.
Lord Lansley
May I say a quick word on these two amendments, which would have the same effect in relation to the voluntary and statutory scheme? I understand the debate that we have just had, but it seems to me that we are likely to have a more productive discussion to this effect on the next group. The purpose of these amendments is simply to say that the money that is generated through the rebate must travel back to pay for medicines. The consequence of any such scheme would be that, whereas at present the Treasury together with NHS England and the Department of Health agree a budget based on the Treasury’s assumption that there will be a drugs bill and that bill will be controlled at that level by virtue of the rebate, the Treasury would be obliged to say that the drugs bill could not be controlled. We know that the rebate does not necessarily correspond to the prior assumption of the level, so the amount of money available to fund medicines would be variable, particularly if it was applied to new medicines, as in Scotland. There would therefore be, from the industry’s point of view, nothing in principle to prevent it from pricing up products that fall within the scheme to which the rebate is applied, with the impact that that would increase the money available to supply additional medicines, knowing perfectly well that there would be no overall budgetary control. At the end of the day, there has to be budgetary control. It is only by virtue of the fact that the rebate is not automatically recycled into additional NHS expenditure that the budget can be controlled. In the absence of any such control, I cannot see how the amendments would work.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
Surely it is the other way round. The NHS could up its intake of new medicines willy-nilly, knowing that the industry would have to pay a rebate to the department. In essence, industry would be paying for the uptake of new medicines. The problem is that the Treasury discounts the figure. It makes an estimate of what the rebate is likely to be in the next financial year and builds it into the baseline budget, which is based on minimal growth.
Lord Lansley
The position is that the PPRS is a deal based on a budget. If you want to construct something that does not have a budget limit, you could certainly do so, but I do not think that the amendments would have the effect that was looked for. As for another way of doing it, this is where we get on to what in my view is the real debate. I am not sure that I have ever believed that there should be a fixed drugs budget in the NHS. We have a health budget and we should aim for the NHS to derive the greatest possible benefit to patients from the budget that it deploys—not the drugs budget but the total health budget.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
That is very interesting. It has always struck me that when you chair a board of an NHS foundation trust, for instance, there is a philosophy that says that spending on doctors and nurses is a good thing but spending on drugs is a bad thing. It is a ludicrous position. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, that there is a big problem. Spending on drugs is seen as a cost pressure, so automatically everyone’s emphasis is on keeping that spending down, whereas a rather more sophisticated approach would take the view that, if you have spent your money on drugs that have had a hugely positive impact on the throughput of patients, cost-effectiveness and efficiency, that might be a good investment. The question when we come to the next group is whether our current arrangements have come to the end of the road and whether we need to move on to something rather more sophisticated.
Lord Warner
What we set up a long time ago was, effectively, NICE to be the arbitrator, and we controlled the flow of technology appraisals into it. I used to sign off a limited number of drugs that would go into the NICE process. We have that system, which has now been legally enshrined. It is also open to NICE to withdraw drugs from use, as it has from time to time, or to change procedures. We have a system enshrined in our law in which the NHS is required to commit to introducing NICE-approved technology appraisals, so the idea that we should let the Treasury arbitrarily reduce and control the small bit of that total NHS budget on those grounds seems bizarre. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Lansley: we have ended up obsessing about this relatively small part of the NHS budget when we have set up a system to ensure that the NHS gets value for money through the NICE appraisal process. We are getting into a strange situation, which is why we are scrabbling around to make amendments to try to make a pretty crazy system slightly less crazy.
Lord Lansley
There is a risk of going on about this, but the structure of the amendment in the context of the PPRS as presently constructed is illogical, because the PPRS is constructed around budget control. The point, however—we will no doubt come back to this, not least on the next group—is that we should be thinking about how we can arrive at a negotiated price for the NHS to buy medicines which may well be marketed initially or globally at a given price, but the amount that the NHS should pay should reflect value. I have said it before and I will keep coming back to it.
I would not be as disparaging of the current consultation between NHS England and NICE at the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. It could have the effect that he describes: adding additional jeopardy because one has to meet not only all the normal criteria for an effective medicine but the NICE threshold, and NHS England might step in with hobnailed boots and say, “But we are not going to make it available and you must change the funding direction”. But it might recognise reality. The consultation, in my view, may have the effect of avoiding arbitrary post hoc rationing of medicines, because the NHS should be up front, negotiating price discounts on medicines, regardless of the rebate. That means engaging with the industry at an early point.
If the industry understands the consultation properly, it will understand that the budgetary impact for the NHS under current circumstances cannot be ignored. The best way to deal with that is not to go through all these processes and then find, at the end of the day, that the NHS cannot afford it, or that NICE has to say no through the application of the threshold. Rather, it is to use the pharmaco-economic evaluation and the health technology assessment properly alongside NHS England and say: “Here is something that is valuable and we want to be able to use it, but we must recognise the budgetary impacts”. There may well therefore be some risk-sharing processes or discounting processes to enable the product to be available to the NHS at an early stage and to give industry and the NHS all the information they need subsequently to be able to make sure that they have got the pricing right.
Lord O'Shaughnessy
I thank noble Lords for these amendments and for the discussion that has followed. I will come back to the issue of budgetary control raised by my noble friend Lord Lansley. I do not think it is enough simply to say that it should not be a factor. It is a factor and I will talk about how that interacts with the current system in my response.
Our concerns with these amendments are twofold—one is a matter of principle and the second is a matter of practice. In my short period in the office I have already had an opportunity to talk about ring-fencing on at least one occasion. Noble Lords understand that the Government’s policy is not to ring-fence with budgets set by politicians but rather to give money to the NHS and its constituent parts and to trust clinical judgment on commissioning health services in response to the regulatory regime that is set up to hold them accountable. I have not yet heard from anybody who disagrees with that fundamental principle.
Amendments 2 and 4 are unnecessary, therefore, because all the income and savings from the PPRS and the statutory scheme are already invested in NHS services. As the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said, the anticipated income from the PPRS and the statutory scheme are put into the NHS baseline. That baseline is the figure above which we will be spending the additional £10 billion by 2020-21. That money is already in the baseline and it is there to be used with the discretion of clinicians within the system.
The Health and Social Care Act 2012 requires the Secretary of State to promote the autonomy of NHS England and clinical commissioning groups. This includes their decisions as commissioners about priorities for funding. That is because it is a fundamental principle of the NHS that funding should be allocated according to clinical priorities based on the judgment of clinical commissioners. That might include new treatments but it might include scaling up older, effective treatments or investing in staff. The proposed amendments would result in the income received from a voluntary or statutory scheme being used solely for the purposes of reimbursing the NHS for medicines and medical supplies. It is perhaps worth highlighting to noble Lords that the NHS spent over £15.2 billion on medicines in 2015-16—far in excess of the cumulative income received from both schemes.
I come to a couple of points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. The first, as I mentioned, is on budgetary control. The second is that if additional money were spent, it could be recycled back into funding for innovative drugs. I am not sure. I have not had the opportunity yet to consult with the boards of life sciences companies, but I am not sure that there is an open-ended commitment there either to continue spending money in the NHS. There is a need for budgetary control on both sides. I appreciate—and it is a strong theme in this debate and was in the previous debate—the need to do something about access. The ability to access drugs and to access them quickly is both good for patients—because clearly those drugs are being approved because they are an improvement largely on what has gone before—and also good for life sciences. If we are in the game, as it were, of trying to find a win-win out of the changes we make now or in future, clearly access will be a clear part of that.
My noble friend Lord Lansley touched on a practical objection. It is the potential unintended consequence of ring-fencing the income from schemes specifically for certain types or categories of medicines. The income from the PPRS and the statutory scheme can fluctuate, so allocating the income to a specific area, such as new medicines, brings risk. This could potentially disadvantage patients by making treatment dependent on income from medicines pricing schemes, thereby producing inequities. At the moment the Department of Health manages that risk. The proposed changes would move that risk on to the NHS—which, as we know, is already under a great deal of pressure.
I understand the intention behind the amendments, but I am not convinced that the Government predetermining clinical decisions and clinical priorities for spending on medicines and medical supplies is the right way to go. We believe that the current PPRS is designed to incentivise companies to bring new medicines to market. Companies with mainly new medicines in their portfolios pay less than companies with mainly old medicines, and as part of the PPRS, the Government have made a number of commitments around NICE decisions and the funding of NICE-approved products in order to support access to new medicines.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister and other noble Lords who have spoken. We have had a very good debate. Obviously, as I made clear at the beginning, I am not wedded to the words of the amendment. It was not the amendment that I wished to bring to your Lordships’ Committee. Clearly, the issue is access and the use of the rebates. I understand the issue about risk and, of course, any considered system in which there clearly needs to be budgetary certainty.
Equally, we need to see much faster uptake of new medicines and, indeed, new technology and devices. A similar argument could be made about new technology as well because, again, we are terribly bad at investing in our own companies even though we have highly successful medical technology and devices industries. They have the same issue of the NHS being incredibly reluctant to invest in their new developments. This has been a long-term problem: the noble Lord, Lord Warner, and I dealt with it 15 or 20 years ago and it has been a problem with the NHS right from the start. The problem is that we are now seeing this connected to the success of the UK’s economy as well, which is why—one way or another—we have to find a solution to this problem.
Turning to CCGs, it is reported on a regular basis that they are making rather bizarre decisions: arbitrary decisions about restricting access to certain treatments that clearly are entirely budget-based and seem to have no value as clinical decisions. I am very worried about the fact that we are now starting to see the legitimisation of very crude rationing of access to services by patients.
This has been a useful debate. Access is crucial and it is clearly not happening at the moment. I hope that between now and Report we can have further discussions and an understanding of what the Government are trying to do to seek to increase access. Having said that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
“(3) In exercising functions in relation to the controls on the costs of health service medicines, the Secretary of State must ensure that any medicine covered by a voluntary or statutory scheme that requires payments calculated by reference to sales of that medicine shall be made available to all NHS patients if recommended by a qualified NHS clinician.(4) An amount calculated under subsection (1)(b) may only be calculated using the same methodology as an amount payable by any member of a scheme made under section 261 of the National Health Service Act 2006 (voluntary schemes for controlling the cost of health service medicines) is calculated.”
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I will speak to the second part of Amendment 3, as I think we have comprehensively covered the first part in our debates on the first two groups. I am not looking to the Minister to respond to the first part. The second part of my amendment seeks clarification on the relationship and equivalence between the voluntary and statutory schemes. It provides a further opportunity to debate the future of a voluntary PPR scheme, because, clearly, it might be argued that the Bill is setting a precedent for determining in legislation the nature of a voluntary scheme. It would be helpful if the Minister set out in very broad terms the kind of approach he wishes to be taken in the future—in either a statutory or voluntary scheme—looking at the issues we have talked about in relation to pricing, access and value for money.
In many ways, the voluntary PPRS approach has served government, patients and the industry pretty well over the years. There is no doubt, as the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, referred to, that it has provided certainty to government, alongside giving the industry flexibility on the prices it sets, because it acts as a marker to many other countries. However, the actual price paid is very different from the notional price set. What comes to my mind is that this is not very transparent and very few people understand the system. One does begin to wonder whether it is still serving its purpose and whether we need to think about a new approach that is neither the voluntary PPRS approach we have at the moment nor the statutory approach we have in mind for companies that have not signed up to the voluntary system. If anything, there is the issue of equivalence, which companies wish to know about in terms of the two schemes, but it would be helpful to know where we are going in relation to future negotiations, and the amendments from the noble Lords, Lord Warner and Lord Lansley, will address this. I beg to move.
Lord Lansley
The purpose of Amendment 5, in my name, is to recognise that the Government have brought forward legislation to do a necessary thing, which is to address the discontinuity between the voluntary scheme and the powers available under the statutory scheme. As such, where companies were operating under the statutory scheme with a pre-existing discounted price, often in the hospital sector, the effect of the statutory scheme imposing a given price cut did not impact on their effective price to their customers. Therefore, they did not make a contribution, in that sense, to the budgetary control that was being looked for. The purpose of the legislation is to bring equivalence to the voluntary and statutory schemes. But if we are creating equivalence between the voluntary and statutory schemes, we should be clear that the legislation does precisely that. The noble Lord, Lord Warner, quite accurately referred to this issue at Second Reading, if I recall. There are companies under the statutory scheme—Gilead is a particular example—with products that would, under the voluntary scheme, not have a PPRS control applied to their pricing because they would not contribute to the rebate as they have been introduced after December 2013. Under the statutory scheme, however, they are required to contribute.
As I understand it, the objection to bringing the two schemes to an equivalent place is that under the statutory scheme, as things stand, there are relatively few products and a significant proportion of them have been introduced since December 2013. Therefore, under the statutory scheme, the effect on the rebate of the rest of the companies would be excessive. That can be dealt with. The powers are available. If we legislate in the form that I propose, the Government can modulate the rebate between the two schemes in order to arrive at a similar result for those companies that have to contribute to the rebate and apply a common percentage. As a matter of principle, if we are legislating for the two to be equivalent, it is desirable to do so.
I am slightly worried about Amendment 3 because it assumes that there is a voluntary scheme. We do not know. There may or may not be a voluntary scheme. But a voluntary scheme will not always be in place at the point at which the Government, in order to protect the NHS, may require there to be one. I do not think that we should be in that position. There would be a flaw in the powers available to set a methodology for a rebate under a statutory scheme. In Amendment 6, which the noble Lord, Lord Warner, has not yet had a chance to speak to, he clearly understands that there needs to be a relationship between these two, but I fear there is a risk of gaming on that amendment because the industry may say that if it does not agree a voluntary scheme there cannot be a statutory scheme. Therefore, there is no scheme, and I do not think that that we want to get ourselves into that position. It will not surprise the Committee that I can see reason for my own amendment even if I am not necessarily in favour of everyone else’s.
Lord Warner
My Lords, I reassure the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, that I see excellent reasons for his amendment. If the purpose of the Bill is to achieve equivalence between the two schemes, the Bill should secure that. At the moment, it does not. The industry does not think that it does. I am not sure, technically, whether the noble Lord’s amendment secures it, but I think it does. If it is not quite right, no doubt the Government can amend it. I tabled Amendment 6 to push the Government a little more on their commitment to a voluntary scheme. That is its purpose. We have had a good canter over that particular area. As I said when we discussed Amendment 1, I was not totally convinced by the Government’s position, but I want to set out briefly why this is important.
The scheme has stood the test of time as a basis for a relationship between an industry and government where that industry has a much bigger set of customers and a much bigger presence outside the UK. We have actually punched above our weight in securing the presence of that industry in this country, partly through the NHS, but partly because a system was imposed on the industry in terms of the research-based drugs industry. There was a negotiation. Amendment 6 is not meant to say in any way that a particular type of PPRS should be enshrined in legislation for all time. It is trying to get the Government to say, clearly and unequivocally, that for the foreseeable future, there will be some form of voluntary scheme in which a negotiation takes place in an open and transparent way with this particular sector in order to keep this sector being attracted to setting up, doing research and developing pharmaceuticals for the population at large and for the NHS in particular.
Amendment 6 is trying to get out of the Government rip-roaring support for the foreseeable future, a little stronger than the Minister said earlier on, for a voluntary scheme that presents an opportunity for government and the sector to agree the basis on which they operate in a life sciences industry producing drugs that can be made available quickly and speedily, when proven, to the NHS and its patients.
Lord O'Shaughnessy
My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their amendments. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, skipped over the first part of Amendment 3. For the sake of completeness, I shall dwell on it briefly. The amendment would circumvent an important part of the checks and balances around prescribing systems. It would basically do away with the NICE process by going straight from licence to availability with clinicians, which we do not think is the right approach.
The second part of Amendment 3 would link the payment mechanisms for the statutory and voluntary schemes, and Amendment 5 would require us to secure equivalent terms for both schemes. The Government’s intention is for the two schemes to deliver a broadly equivalent—I emphasise “broadly”—level of savings as a proportion of the total sales covered by each scheme. However, to require the terms of each scheme to be the same, which is what the amendments denote, would be inappropriate and would severely restrict the scope for the two schemes to operate in a complementary manner. The idea of equivalence is too strong and would involve there being similar processes, whereas the alignment approach outlined in the Bill would allow for similar outcomes, which is ultimately what we are driving at and would not undermine the complementarity of the two approaches.
The voluntary scheme is a matter for negotiation with industry. As such, there is scope to include a range of measures that reflect the priorities of both sides. To give an example, the current voluntary scheme, the PPRS, includes a range of provisions developed through negotiation with industry that sit alongside the payment mechanism. They include price modulation, which enables companies to put prices up and down as long as the overall effect across their portfolio is neutral. This has commercial value to companies, who may be willing to accept a higher payment percentage as a result.
To give another example, while new medicines in the PPRS are excluded from the PPRS payments, the PPRS payment percentage level is set to achieve the agreed level of savings across both old and new medicines. This means that each company’s share of the income due to the Government will vary depending on the balance of new and old products in their portfolio, with companies which have mainly new products paying less than companies with mainly old products—there is obviously value in that for encouraging innovation.
However, it would be very challenging to replicate this model in the statutory scheme, as many fewer companies are affected by the statutory scheme regulations than are members of the PPRS. As a result, there is a smaller pool of companies with older products. To achieve the same level of savings overall from the statutory scheme as from the PPRS while exempting new products would require an extremely high payment percentage—I think that my noble friend Lord Lansley conceded that point. This provides an example of where minor differences in terms may be required to deliver an equivalent level of savings across the two schemes overall. The detail of how a future statutory scheme would work will be subject to further consultation that will take place this year.
The freedom to be able to negotiate the voluntary scheme has been valued greatly by both industry and government. We would intend that any future voluntary scheme is established through negotiation in this way, but linking the payment mechanisms as described in the amendments would inevitably place a restriction on that freedom.
Amendment 6 would mean that the Secretary of State’s powers to operate a statutory scheme would be permitted only while a voluntary scheme was in operation—a point that has already been raised. It is clear that the noble Lord, Lord Warner, is keen to retain a voluntary scheme in future and we know that industry values the agreement, which began 60 years ago in 1957 and has been of benefit to both government and the life sciences sector over that time.
The current scheme, the 2014 PPRS, and its predecessors show how government and industry can work together to develop solutions on a voluntary basis for the benefit of patients. Like the noble Lord, I am keen to continue the collaborative and productive relationship that the Government currently have with the pharmaceutical and life sciences industries. With the life sciences industrial strategy coming up, and reflecting on the debates that we have had, it is clear that there is a lot more we can do to enhance that relationship.
However, the amendment would have the effect of giving industry no incentive to agree a voluntary scheme, as there would be no fallback to a statutory scheme in the event of failing to agree a voluntary scheme. Without a voluntary scheme in operation, there would be no scheme to control the cost of medicines—so it would in effect tie one hand behind our back in any negotiations.
The statutory scheme and the PPRS both include provisions for controlling the maximum price of medicines, and these prices are the starting point for negotiation of supply contracts between the NHS and suppliers of medicines. As I think all noble Lords would recognise, removal of both schemes would risk significant price rises.
I am sympathetic to the noble Lord’s intention in tabling this amendment and welcome the opportunity to reassure him and other noble Lords that the Government are committed to continuing a collaborative approach to future medicines pricing arrangements. We firmly believe that it is beneficial to collaborate with industry to develop the successor arrangements to the 2014 PPRS. This legislation should provide the widest possible range of options in order that the best arrangements, whether voluntary or statutory, can be put in place for the benefit of NHS patients.
However, the amendment would have the opposite effect by removing a key incentive for industry to collaborate, and would bring significant risks to the control of the cost of medicines. I ask noble Lords not to press their amendments.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, one of the benefits of Committee is that one can draft imperfect amendments, have them corrected by Members of the Committee and then, if necessary, come back with better amendments on Report. I have never worried about the absolute wording of amendments, because whatever happens, in the end, the Government have to come back at Third Reading to correct everything. So we can relax about that.
It has been a helpful debate, with a helpful response from the Minister. He has used the term “broadly equivalent”; he has also said that the Government are committed to a voluntary scheme in future and, I think, recognises the flexibility that it gives. However, we still have much to discuss about the nature of the future relationship and potential agreements.
I also worry about most people’s current lack of understanding of what the negotiations mean and of the actual prices paid. I wonder whether we have reached a point where we need to move to something that is more understandable and transparent. I think that what the Minister said about the future of the voluntary scheme will be welcomed, I am sure that it has been a helpful debate, and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Wheeler
“( ) The Secretary of State must make or maintain legal exemptions for low cost presentations of health service medicines covered by a statutory scheme.( ) “Low cost presentation” means any health service medicine with a reimbursement price of less than £2 per unit or with sales to NHS England totalling less than £450,000 per annum.”
Baroness Wheeler (Lab)
My Lords, we tabled Amendment 7 to probe the Government on why, in their new draft regulations, with 25 pages just on the branded medicines proposals, they seek to alter the current arrangements for exempting low-cost presentations from the price-reduction requirements of the statutory scheme. As the Minister will know, the existing regulations specify as an exemption a low reimbursement price of either under £2 an item or low primary care sales to NHS England of less than £450,000 a year. The provision has been there to protect the commercial viability of low-revenue or very low-cost medicines. It therefore seems somewhat counterintuitive to remove this safeguard at a time of such significant uncertainty for the pharmaceutical industry, particularly in the face of what could be a highly disruptive withdrawal from the EU.
Under paragraph 11, the proposed revised regulations give the Secretary of State the power to exempt a manufacturer or supplier where he considers that an exemption is necessary to ensure adequate supplies of medicines for health services purposes. This changes the current arrangements to give the Secretary of State a discretionary power that he may use in certain circumstances, rather than the automatic exemption that currently operates for £2 per item or a £450,000 annual sum. The current provision is important in maintaining adequate supplies to the health service of the medicines in question.
We are concerned about the significant impact that the removal of the current arrangements will have on manufacturers producing the common, low-cost generic branded medicines in question, such as those for hypertension. Although it is not always the case, the producers of such low-cost medicines are often small businesses operating on small margins. If they are not exempted from paying a rebate on those medicines, many will struggle to maintain current low costs, resulting in a consequent rise in costs for those medicines.
It is also important that the regulations accompanying the Bill maintain a specific exemption from the statutory scheme in the case of supply shortages, as currently. Amendment 8 would therefore formally place this duty on the Secretary of State. This is particularly important given the concerns of GPs and other health professionals, who have voiced frustration about having to prescribe “second choice” medicines because their preferred drug is out of stock. Representative bodies have also expressed their concern about the removal of the current exemption.
The amendments do not call for anything new but for some of the current regulations to be maintained and—where the Secretary of State believes that there is a case for it—strengthened. I look forward to hearing from the Minister the Government’s reasons for seeking to change the current regulations. Has any work been undertaken to assess the potential impact on the future availability and cost of the medicines that will be affected, and on future supplies? Is this designed to save costs—and, if so, what is the expected level of savings to the NHS?
Noble Lords may feel that there is a case for debating the long-term place of such exemptions in the regulations, but now is clearly not the time to pull the rug from beneath the producers of low-cost medicines, or medicines at risk of supply shortages. Instead, it is important that the status quo is maintained until such time as the Government can be clear about the consequences and the benefits of any change. I beg to move.
Lord O'Shaughnessy
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Wheeler, for raising important issues through these amendments, both of which relate to the operation of the statutory scheme. I will turn to each separately.
Amendment 7 would set an exemption for low-cost presentations, defined in primary legislation as those presentations,
“of less than £2 per unit or with sales to NHS England totalling less than £450,000 per annum”.
This is similar to the exemption that exists in the current statutory scheme for presentations with a reimbursement price of less than £2.
Officials have continued to have constructive discussions with industry representatives and stakeholders throughout the consultation and since publishing the illustrative regulations. Through these discussions, my officials have been listening to views on the illustrative regulations and refining the policy approach for a future statutory scheme. I am sympathetic to the arguments that companies make in relation to these types of low-cost presentations, which could not only lead to direct savings to the NHS when compared to more expensive treatments but incentivise companies to lower prices further to meet the threshold. I reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Wheeler, that as a result of the discussions with industry, my officials are already considering a policy approach for low-price presentations.
However, the Government are not convinced that it is appropriate or desirable to have such an exemption set out in primary legislation. Setting out specific thresholds in primary legislation would be inflexible and would limit the Government’s ability to adjust them to account for the economic circumstances at the time. I can, however, commit that an exemption for low-price presentations will be included as part of the forthcoming consultation on the operation of the scheme, which will take place this year. I hope that this provides the noble Baroness and other noble Lords with the reassurance that the Government will fully consider this and take it forward.
Turning to the second amendment, Amendment 8 would place a legal duty on the Secretary of State to make provisions which “ensure adequate supplies” of those medicines in the statutory scheme. The production and supply of medicines is complex and highly regulated, involving materials and processes that must, rightly, meet rigorous safety and quality standards. These complex factors stretch far beyond those that relate specifically to medicine costs. Difficulties in ensuring supply can arise for a number of reasons including manufacturing problems, supply and demand imbalance and issues related to raw materials and regulatory action as a result of, for example, manufacturing site inspections. It is also important to remember the impact of a globalised pharmaceutical industry, which can mean that factors around the world can directly impact supplies of medicines to the UK.
However, I reassure the Committee that the Government recognise the vital importance of ensuring adequate supplies and actively manage and respond to supply issues on a daily basis. The Government have also carefully considered the supply issues in developing policy and regulation. We consider that in most cases, the ability to increase prices, as provided in the illustrative regulations, is the right way to address short or long-term supply problems, where these circumstances are dependent on UK pricing. We also recognise that there may be exceptions to this approach, which is why we included in the illustrative regulations a provision in Regulation 11 allowing the Secretary of State to exempt companies from price controls in the statutory scheme,
“where he considers that an exemption is necessary to ensure adequate supplies of that presentation for health service purposes”.
I understand and am sympathetic to the intention behind the amendment and concerns relating to the supply of medicines in the statutory scheme. However, given the complexities in the provision and supply of medicines, we believe that exemptions for supply issues are best dealt with by exemption, rather than a comprehensive and broad duty. In responding to both amendments, I hope that I have provided the Committee with the assurance that we recognise the concerns and will address them in both primary legislation and the illustrative regulations. I ask that the noble Baroness withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Wheeler
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his response and for the focus that he says that he will give in future to constructive consultation with the industry. There was a feeling that it was not being consulted on these issues, and his reassurances about that are welcome. Obviously, supply in the industry is complex and I will look at what the Minister said. We are concerned about the industry’s fears about the cost of deleting these provisions and we were certainly not advocating putting them into statutory requirements but making sure that the regulations dealt with this issue adequately. For the most part, I thank the Minister for the response, and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
“Report on use of payments made under schemes
The Secretary of State must prepare and lay before each House of Parliament a report covering each financial year during which this Act is in force, detailing how the payments made by manufacturers or suppliers under the schemes established or amended by sections 1 and 3 have been used to re-imburse the National Health Service for expenditure on medicines and medical supplies.”
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendment 10A, which was inserted at a late stage, and Amendment 14. This comes back to the theme of transparency. My amendments cover the use of payments made under the reimbursement scheme. They cover the pricing and availability of medicines and other medical supplies, research and development and the duty on the NHS to promote innovation. Given that we have already had an interesting debate and that these matters are very important to both patients and the life sciences sector, is the Minister sympathetic to the idea of regular reporting on how this is going—the impact on patient access, payments and reimbursement in a way that would allow parliamentarians in particular and the public to be kept up to date?
I am not wedded to the wording of any of the amendments, but it would be helpful to know whether the Minister is sympathetic to regular reports, which would be helpful to noble Lords and Members of the other place. We could get to grips with what is happening and see the impact in terms of access, reimbursement and investment in life sciences. I hope that the Minister will give a positive answer on this. I beg to move.
Baroness Walmsley
My Lords, I am in favour of this group of amendments. The Government plan to introduce new regulations and duties on the industry at a very difficult time, so the Minister cannot be surprised that the industry is concerned and that parliamentarians would like to take the opportunity to hold the Government to account based on what happens after the Bill becomes an Act.
For some of the things that we have been talking about, I have been told that the Government already have powers but have not used them—they are just refining and clarifying them and making them more proportionate. Of course, that makes the industry worry that they are planning to use them, even though they are not saying so. We need to know what will happen to all these issues of availability, access, proper supply and cost to the NHS once the Bill has passed. In the interests of transparency and post-legislative scrutiny, will the Minister accept that the Government should report back to Parliament?
Lord Warner
My Lords, I have added my name to Amendment 14, but I also support in principle Amendments 9 and 10A in this group. Each of these amendments does something slightly different and they need some consolidation. They are, however, a reflection of a deep sense of unease over where the Bill is taking us and a strong wish to monitor its consequences. The Government are imposing a lot of requirements on the industry for information. The quid-pro-quo is that we would like a lot more information from the Government on how this has worked in practice.
There seem to be three features that that kind of reporting back should cover. The first is the scale of payments made; the second is the use to which the money has been put; and the third is the impact of the Bill on the access to new medicines of NHS patients. It would not be right to try to draft this off the tops of our heads, but it would be helpful if the Government would accept that there should be some kind of monitoring of key issues around the Bill that are then reported back to Parliament and the public on a regular basis—let us say annually—and if we could get together with the Government to help draft something for Report in this kind of territory.
Lord O'Shaughnessy
My Lords, I am grateful to noble Lords for raising the issue of reporting requirements. We will address at the end the issue of access and my sympathy to reporting requirements, but I first want to deal with the amendments as they stand.
Under the current PPRS, the Government regularly publish information relating to the operation of the voluntary scheme. Of course, for a future statutory scheme I draw attention to the regulations that we have already discussed, in which there are annual reviews of the regulations and a requirement to publish a report on each review. The illustrative regulations require an annual review that will: set out the objectives of the scheme; assess the extent that our objectives have been achieved; and assess whether those objectives remain appropriate. These requirements will be tested through the consultation on the regulations and we will, of course, take account of those views. I totally accept that reporting is a critical principle, but believe that setting out the requirements in primary legislation is too restrictive because of the potential to change from year to year what the priorities are within a sector and within the NHS.
Turning to the specifics of Amendment 9, I reassure noble Lords that the content of annual reviews would not be restricted to reviewing objectives. They must also be able to address key issues arising during the year that might affect the operation of the scheme, so there is flexibility there. We also intend for the annual review to be published and put before Parliament, so there is the opportunity for that to be seen and discussed. On the details of what it is proposed to report—in particular, how the payments are used—to achieve the specific aims of the amendment, the department would need to ring-fence the funds and monitor where the payments are used. I do not want to rehash our discussion about ring-fencing. I take seriously the point that noble Lords make about driving access to innovative drugs but we do not think this is the right way of doing it.
Nor do I believe that, through these means, it is right to address matters relating to the NHS duty to promote innovation. This Bill is ultimately about controlling the cost of medicines and medical supplies. The NHS Act 2006 puts duties on the Secretary of State to take into account both the need for medicinal products to be available for the health service on reasonable terms and the costs of research and development, which is a big factor in innovation. By taking into account these factors, the Secretary of State is looking at the needs of the industry to support the R&D base as is necessary to support the development of innovative medicines and technologies.
The NHS duty to promote innovation is different. It is about promoting innovation in the provision of health services and there is an extremely broad agenda that goes well beyond medicines. We have already said that we all want to make the UK the best place in the world to design, develop and deploy life sciences products. We do not believe that the Bill will have a negative impact on our doing so. We have also talked about the accelerated access review, so I will not go over that.
Turning to the specifics of Amendment 10A, the supply of medicines is highly complex, and pricing is one part of it. Other issues of course include rigorous safety and quality standards. Difficulties faced in the take-up or availability of medicines can be influenced by a number of reasons which are nothing to do with pricing. There can be manufacturing problems, such as batch failures; changes in guidelines, such as antibiotic switches; and raw material problems, as well as regulatory changes.
For example, in 2015, there was worldwide withdrawal of a branded antipsychotic injection, Piportil, due to a global shortage of the active pharmaceutical ingredient. Sanofi was unable to find an alternative source of this ingredient and had to discontinue the product. I set that out to illustrate the point that it is not always easy to link changes in pricing to issues of availability or access: there are other things to take into account. That is why we do not believe that we should set out, either in primary legislation or beyond the commitments made in the illustrative regulations, specifically to assess the impact on availability, access and so on.
Leaving all that aside and returning to the recurring theme of the debate, I understand the desire for greater transparency, which is undoubtedly the right approach to access. We must think about how we can improve access to innovative medicines for NHS patients and, in doing so, improve the operating conditions, if you like, for the life sciences industry—the win-win situation to which we keep returning. I would be happy to meet noble Lords either individually or collectively to think about what more we could do, whether through the Bill or looking ahead to the life sciences strategy, to ensure that we deliver on this promise. I take very seriously the warnings that many noble Lords have issued; the Government absolutely want to address this. On that basis, I ask noble Lords not to press their amendments.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister. On the two arguments he put forward against the amendments, he said, first, that primary legislation would be too restrictive and what one might need to report on one year, one would not in another. The three amendments cover payment, supply, R&D and innovation. I do not think that there would be any year in which it would not be appropriate to report on them. He also said that duties in existing legislation cover some of these areas, and that where they do, such as the duty on innovation—presumably in the 2012 Act—they go wider than the intent in the amendments. I fully accept that. None the less, there is a strong argument for progress being monitored and for Parliament to be involved in that. However, I am grateful to the Minister for agreeing to have further discussion about the core issue of access, and I hope that we may take this forward. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Lansley
“Price control: criteria
After section 264 of the National Health Service Act 2006 (statutory schemes: supplementary) insert—“264ZZA Price control: criteria(1) In determining the prices of medicines under sections 261 and 263 of this Act, the Secretary of State must have regard to the criteria listed in subsection (2), insofar as the prices concerned relate to a new chemical entity, or a new indication for the use of an existing medicine.(2) The criteria are—(a) the prospective therapeutic benefit to patients;(b) the extent to which the therapy meets an as yet unmet need;(c) any wider social benefits which would accrue from the medicine’s use;(d) the desirability of making licensed medicines available to clinicians and their patients, for use where they are the most clinically appropriate treatment; (e) the desirability of promoting innovation in new therapies; and(f) affordability for the National Health Service, including any evaluation of the relative benefit of the medicine compared to other treatments available.””
Lord Lansley
Amendment 10 is intended to insert into the Bill some of the criteria that I hope would form part of a value assessment for pricing of medicines. The difficulty is that, as things stand, the structure of the two schemes is not designed to take account of those criteria. It is not a value assessment but a budgetary control process. We are, to that extent, looking at an amendment the purpose of which is to put into the legislation criteria applicable to the design of a future PPRS.
I have in the past—in a debate in my name in another place, back in December 2014—expressed the view that we could redesign the existing PPRS to reflect the value of medicines. That would be done by modulating the extent of the rebate payable, such that medicines that were relatively costly in relation to their determined value under such a system would pay a higher proportion of the rebate than those that appeared, on the basis of this assessment, to be charged at something more relevant to the implied value. That is in the existing scheme and I see no prospect of it being revised during its present life through to the end of 2018. An amendment of this character would clearly be designed in relation to a future PPRS.
Lord O'Shaughnessy
My Lords, I am very grateful to my noble friend Lord Lansley for this amendment and I pay tribute to his considerable expertise in this area. We had the opportunity to discuss some of this when we met. I also recognise that the amendment’s purpose is to start thinking ahead to what comes next. It is not so much to define right here and now what is required but to do something which I think he has been trying to do for a long time: to broaden the discussion about how we price value into medicines and bring that broader discussion to bear. I recognise the intention. It clearly is important that we think of these things in the broadest possible sense for the benefit of the most people possible.
Amendment 10 would require the Secretary of State to have regard to factors such as therapeutic benefit to patients, meeting unmet need, wider societal benefits, the promotion of innovation in new therapies and NHS affordability. I would like to draw noble Lords’ attention to the legal duties that already exist, which the Government believe currently achieve the intention behind the amendment. Section 266(4) of the NHS Act 2006 already requires the Government to bear in mind,
“the need for medicinal products to be available to the health service on reasonable terms”,
and,
“the costs of research and development”,
when limiting the price of medicines—something we discussed in the last group. Section 233 of the Health and Social Care Act 2012 requires NICE to have regard to,
“the broad balance between the benefits and costs of provision … the degree of need … and … the desirability of promoting innovation”.
In reading out these sections, I am beginning to understand that these Acts are often very, very long. I am thankful for small mercies that our Bill is not, yet.
As part of the NICE clinical and cost-effectiveness assessments, NICE already considers factors such as therapeutic benefit to patients, unmet clinical need and the promotion of innovation, and has recently consulted on new affordability considerations. The point here is that some of the factors that my noble friend is concerned about are already taking place but within the NICE process as part of that assessment.
The Government’s priority is to make sure we get the best possible results for all NHS patients with the resources we have. We will continue to look at how to promote better access to effective medicines through NICE recommendations and guidance to the NHS. In developing that guidance, NICE takes account of all health-related costs and benefits, including the benefits to carers. As I am sure my noble friend will recall, in 2014, NICE considered changes to its methods to better capture the wider costs and benefits to society of new drugs and treatments, sometimes known as value-based pricing. It is only responsible to report that, during the consultation, some significant concerns were raised; for example, about the potential implications for products that offer limited life extension without associated gains in quality of life for those with terminal illnesses. The consultation highlighted a significant diversity of responses, demonstrating that this is a complex issue. The point here is to say that there may be a way through, but we do not yet know what the right way forward is. It is critical that stakeholders continue to have confidence in NICE’s work, and we agree with NICE that these issues require very careful consideration before making changes to the way that we assess medicines.
My final point is on freedom of pricing, an issue that has been raised and which this amendment would have an impact on. Noble Lords will be aware that the Government, when setting prices for new medicines, currently operate a system of freedom of pricing for medicines that are a new active substance. This means that the maximum NHS price approved and published by the Secretary of State is that proposed by companies. NICE will then assess the product and consider whether it is clinically and cost effective. The PPRS allows a company to propose a discount to the maximum price.
We know that this system of freedom of pricing for new active substances is of great value to the life sciences industry, providing commercial flexibility, which is important in a context where other countries may reference the maximum NHS price in their own pricing arrangements—something we know to be of huge value. It does not prevent the NHS securing substantial discounts, which indeed it does, and these form part of the overall assessment of value undertaken by NICE. The amendment could, however, have the effect of removing the principle of freedom of pricing, which has been an important pillar of medicines pricing agreements for years. It would require the introduction of assessments akin to clinical and cost effectiveness when determining price, as opposed to determining through NICE whether it should be used. Such an approach would largely replicate the factors that NICE considers as part of its clinical and cost-effectiveness assessments.
I want to make one final point on the current scheme and looking ahead. The PPRS commits the Government to maintaining the basic NICE threshold and take-up periods until the end of 2018. It is my belief that the right time to look at whether the sorts of factors that my noble friend has raised should be taken into account in medicines funding and pricing arrangements is as part of discussions on a new medicines pricing system, where it can then be looked at in the round. That opportunity will arise when considering what should happen when the current PPRS expires. I would be very happy to explore with him proposals on what any new scheme could look like. I look forward to productive dialogue and to benefiting from his wisdom in the months ahead. On that basis, we believe that the amendment is unnecessary, although we sympathise with its intention. I therefore ask my noble friend to withdraw it.
Lord Lansley
I am grateful to my noble friend for that thoughtful and helpful response. I will say three things. First, thank you for the opportunity to be consulted as the future PPRS structure is developed. I very much appreciate that.
Secondly, on freedom of pricing and introduction, it does not necessarily follow that putting into the legislation the criteria that Ministers should take into account in so far as they exercise their powers has a direct impact. That might be done, as I described, through the mechanism of modulating the rebate, which would not impact on the freedom of pricing and introduction.
My third point is that I did not invent value-based pricing. I may have advocated it for some considerable time—probably 10 years now—but it was advocated before I took it up by the OECD in a wide-ranging report on pharmaceutical pricing internationally and by the Office of Fair Trading in its review of the previous PPRS.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I think it goes back even further, to an Oxera report on value-based pricing.
Lord Lansley
The noble Lord is absolutely right about that. There is a history to this. The reason why there is a history is, first, that this is an eminently desirable place to arrive at, in that it would give us tremendous transparency in pricing. At the moment, it is extremely difficult to discern the pricing structures in the industry from the point of view of the payers. Secondly, it would enable us—and this is the objective—to arrive at the point where we could give patients the access to the medicines that are most appropriate to them.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
This is very interesting and rows back to a point that the noble Lord made earlier. One issue is the capacity to negotiate with industry. My understanding is that the pharmaceutical industry has made some approaches to NHS England to look at elements of what the noble Lord is suggesting. There is a sense that, at the moment, there simply is not the capacity to negotiate the kind of sophisticated agreement that he seeks.
Lord Lansley
Without repeating what I said earlier about the consultation being conducted jointly by NHS England and NICE, I think that that is precisely the point. These two organisations need to be brought together. There is a degree of sophistication in the NICE processes that needs to be allied to the affordability and therapeutic benefit considerations as seen by NHS England. I freely admit that NHS England is still developing its role.
In relation to specialised health commissioning, I think that it is tremendously positive for it to be able to see the needs and advantages of commissioning all these specialised services on a national basis, as opposed to the patchwork and inconsistencies that we used to see. In that sense, it is only discovering what the commissioning pressures and costs look like—but that will enable it to move on to understanding what that means in terms of the relative benefit and, by implication, affordability of getting into negotiations with companies.
We need to arrive at the point where NHS England can engage up front with industry about the potential cost and pricing of medicines and obviate the need for NICE to go through the long process of the introduction of additional thresholds. As we discussed, there is an issue about the introduction of an additional threshold for highly specialised technologies. We do not want to go to that place with additional thresholds and a variety of arbitrary figures. We should be able to arrive at a point where industry can engage up front with an expectation of understanding what kind of discounting or price it is likely to be able to attract from the NHS because it is able to have a serious discussion about relative value.
I have been dragged back into another, longer conversation. I entirely take my noble friend’s point that there are references to these criteria for Ministers to take account of elsewhere, but there is a risk that the PPRS can be constructed as a budgetary control mechanism without regard to those criteria—notwithstanding that Ministers have a responsibility for them in other places. Even if it were constructed in terms of cross-reference to ministerial duties elsewhere, we could still continue to look at whether this part of the legislation—the statutory basis for the scheme—should cross-refer to the criteria that should be brought to apply. But I take my noble friend’s comments in good part and I am happy on that basis to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff
In light of the noble Lord’s remarks, I wonder how he sees there being flexibility. The problem with establishing a value-based price, however one works it out, is that we do not have a crystal ball. A product may be used for a whole lot of different indications. One example is Rituximab, which was developed for lymphoma but is now widely used for at least seven other indications. Some of those are chronic conditions, so there is long-term use.
Obviously, the company produced a product and a price was fixed estimated on a certain amount of use, but then its sales went up hugely. That represents an enormous profit. In the system that the noble Lord envisages, how much flexibility would be built in to allow for volume sales and a dramatic lowering of the production costs? That has happened with a lot of things that were initially expensive to produce, but where production costs dropped dramatically over time. We must not inadvertently get locked into pricings that over time become inappropriate.
Lord Lansley
There is a risk of making this debate too extended, but the amendment is not about the whole structure of pricing but about what criteria should be taken into account. In the context of a PPRS scheme such as the present one, the point I made previously was that it would be possible, for example—and this is only an example—to modulate the rebate by reference to any gap between the price charged to the NHS by a company and the value as disclosed by a comparative assessment.
Of course, if there are a number of different indications, the value may vary according to those indications, but that is no problem in itself because all you are doing is trying to understand to what extent a company would be required to contribute a lot to the rebate because there was a big gap between the price charged and its relative value. Some companies may contribute virtually nothing to the rebate because there is no disclosed gap between the price charged to the NHS for a product and its relative value. That is merely an example of how a scheme could be adapted using this sort of value assessment. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord O'Shaughnessy
“( ) Section 260 (control of maximum price of medical supplies other than health service medicines) is amended in accordance with subsections (2) and (2A).”
Lord O'Shaughnessy
My Lords, this group of government amendments would ensure that, as is the case with the power to control the cost of health service medicines in the NHS Act 2006, the Secretary of State would be required to consult representative bodies before making legislation to control prices of medical supplies.
The NHS Act 2006 contains provision for the Secretary of State to control the cost of both health service medicines and medical supplies. It also contains a requirement on the Secretary of State to consult with the industry body before any cost control scheme for health service medicines is made. There is, however, no requirement to consult before making price controls on medical supplies. The amendment would introduce this requirement.
An amendment was tabled in Committee and on Report in the House of Commons, with support from Labour and the SNP. It would have had a similar effect, but it was not consistent with the existing provisions for health service medicines in the NHS Act 2006. Representative bodies in the medical devices sector have expressed their support for the amendment. I believe that it would improve the Bill by ensuring that appropriate consultation takes place before the introduction of any scheme to control the price of medical supplies. Therefore, I hope noble Lords will be prepared to accept this amendment.
Lord O'Shaughnessy
“(2A) After subsection (1) insert—“(1A) Before making an order under subsection (1) the Secretary of State must consult any body which appears to the Secretary of State appropriate to represent persons who manufacture, distribute or supply medical supplies falling within subsection (1).””
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, we discussed at Second Reading the general concern that the Bill extends amendments aimed at the provision of health service medicines to provisions relating to medical supplies. Subsequently, the Minister has written to us to explain that,
“section 260 of the NHS Act 2006 already provides the Secretary of State with powers to control prices of medical supplies and to require companies to provide information on any aspect of their business. Clause 5 of the Bill ensures that the enforcement and territorial provisions for any scheme concerning medical supplies are aligned with those for health service medicines, including changing non-compliance from a criminal to a civil offence … While the Government is currently not using its powers to control prices of medical supplies … it is important that we continue to have these powers”.
I have to say that, so far, I am not convinced. Will the Minister confirm that the section of the NHS Act 2006 to which he referred is essentially a consolidation measure, which merely restates the provision introduced some years before? Indeed, with the help of the Library, I can say it seems that the measure was first introduced in 1977. There seems to be no reference in Hansard as to the reasons that it was then introduced, although it is thought that it was part of the debates on the Bill on the status of private patients in the NHS. Looking back to those happy days, one can only imagine the debates that we had. The point is that the power has never been used: it was legislated for 40 years ago and it has never been used.
I start from the premise that, if a provision introduced 40 years ago has never been used, the first question is: should it be needed at all? So far, I have heard no convincing argument that it should. With this provision having never been used, even though on the statute book for 40 years, the Minister should not be surprised that the companies concerned are suspicious of the Government’s motives for doing what they are doing. This is particularly the case because there was so little consultation with the medical technology industry, as an example, prior to the publication of this Bill.
As just one example of this, at Second Reading in the Commons, the Health Secretary said that his officials had consulted stakeholders across the supply chain, including those from the medical devices sector. My understanding, however, is that the continence-stoma industry, and its relevant trade associations, was not consulted about the potential impact of the Bill. It is unclear why the Government want to do this in relation to medical supplies. If ever there was an example of gold-plating of legislation, this is it. I hope that the Government will be prepared to modify those provisions.
If the Government really want to extend this beyond medicines to medical supplies, surely they can find a way to remove the open-ended provisions and set a threshold to trigger them. At the moment, we have no information. There was none in the impact assessment. Given that the Government are supposedly interested in light-touch regulation, it is difficult to understand why Ministers have not removed this clause from the Bill and the section from the 2006 Act. It is very difficult to see what they are getting at here.
Lord Warner
My Lords, I am very interested in this part and added my name to that of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, in opposition to the clause. He sparked my interest by accusing me of taking through the 2006 Act. Only on further reflection with my ageing brain did I find that I had not taken it through the House when I was a Minister because it was a consolidation Act. As far as I can recall, it went through both Houses of Parliament without any direct consideration, because there were no amendments to any of the legislation covered by the Act.
The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, in a very Sherlock Holmes manner, has been pursuing where this all came from. As far as I can see, it came from 1977, after a period in the Callaghan Government when there was great excitement about the relationship between the NHS, private practice and the private sector, following my period as private secretary to Barbara Castle. It comes from that generation. As the Minister and his officials indicated in a helpful meeting that we had, it has never been used. We are talking about a provision that comes not just from a long time ago but from a totally different context. We have Whitehall picking up a piece of legislation which it thinks may be useful and slotting it into the Bill with an amended purpose.
As the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said, the medical devices sector does not think that there has been adequate consultation. It cannot understand what the Government are up to on this. The only justification it seems to have been given is that the department is modernising—whatever that means—a particular piece of old legislation. Modernisation is one of the words that one treats with a certain amount of caution, particularly when it affects public services. We are very unclear why the devices sector has attracted the attention of the Department of Health.
We are clear what the mischief is on the medicines side that the Government are trying to address. We are not clear what the mischief is on the devices side—medical supplies—that has caused the Government to go rootling around in the archives to find a bit of legislation that enables them to place a considerable requirement on the devices sector, which has been quietly minding its own business with a kitemarking system and the usual tendering processes for selling its products to the NHS.
I think we need to be a lot clearer than we are now as to why the Government need this modernising legislation. I remember that when I was a Minister one of the things I was trying to do was reduce the regulatory burden on the NHS and the health sector. I confess to having slipped up a bit in that I totally missed this 1977 regulatory burden. I wish I had spotted it, because we could have struck it out of the legislation while we were tidying up other things. Having got that off my chest and owned up to it, I would really like to know why the Government want this gold-plated provision on regulating a sector which, as far as I can see, has not caused any great problems. Perhaps the Minister can tell us why they have suddenly gone in for this attention and whether they have actually been neglectful of the sector. Has it been ripping off people a great deal for the past seven or eight years? Should we have acted sooner?
Baroness Walmsley
My Lords, I think you only want to modernise something when you are planning to use it. Therefore, I hope the Minister can understand the level of suspicion and worry that we have been hearing from the sector. I understand that the Government want to make the penalty for not complying with the information requirements more proportionate—that is fair enough. But if the Government are not planning to use those powers then why do they want to make that small but fairly significant change?
I am not aware of any competition law action against companies providing medical supplies to say they have abused the system or overcharged. I am aware that an awful lot of the companies producing medical supplies are fairly small and would fall below the £5 million level and therefore not be affected by this. However, some companies that provide a lot of equipment and supplies do come within the scope of what the Government are trying to do, but they are, in fact, very competitive. It is a very competitive market already and, as far as I know, the prices charged are affected by competition. Therefore, to my knowledge, the NHS is not being ripped off. I have asked the Minister whether he has any evidence to the contrary. I have not heard anything yet, but perhaps he will be able to give us something this evening.
Lord O'Shaughnessy
I thank noble Lords for the debate on Clause 5. I am also grateful for the tour d’horizon or history lesson on how this has all come about. It feels as though it has slipped through many nets, for which there are multiple responsibilities around the room.
I will first address the point about consultation. Noble Lords will appreciate it when I say that, personally, I have not had the chance of undertaking that consultation but it is something that I am committed to doing. Whatever has gone before, I can at least give the reassurance that I will meet the relevant bodies in the next few weeks and discuss their concerns ahead of Report. At least in a forward-looking way, I can provide that reassurance.
As everyone has stated, the critical point here is that the 2006 Act gives the Secretary of State the power to control the price of medical supplies and to collect information about medical supplies. What Clause 5 does is to ensure that the same enforcement and territorial extent to provisions apply to controlling the cost of medical supplies and health service medicines. It does not give the Secretary of State any new powers to control the price of medical supplies. There are currently inconsistencies in the enforcement and territorial extent provisions. For example, a contravention or a failure to comply with the current provisions in the 2006 Act for medical supplies can result in a criminal offence. By contrast, the equivalent penalty for medicines is a civil financial penalty. Clause 5, therefore, aligns the enforcement provisions for medical supplies with those for medicines and, in so doing, makes them more proportionate, as the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, has pointed out.
With respect to the territorial extent, the power to control the prices of medical supplies in the NHS Act 2006 currently extends only to England and Wales. Clause 5 would extend the power to control the prices of medical supplies to Scotland and Northern Ireland. That would be consistent with the territorial extent of the powers to control the costs of health service medicines. That is an important point.
A number of noble Lords asked why the Government need the powers to control the prices of medical supplies when they do not currently use them nor have ever used them. That is a perfectly reasonable question to raise and one that occurred to me, too. We do not have any immediate concerns about the pricing of medical supplies. It is true that the market for medical supplies is very different from the market for medicines. It is innovative and competitive, and new medical supplies are generally faced with competition much more quickly than is the case for new medicines. However, I remind noble Lords that until recently we did not think that we needed the powers to set the price of unbranded generic medicines. We thought that competition in the market was working well and keeping prices down. When we realised that the market was not functioning as well as we thought with respect to certain products, and we were faced with companies charging unreasonably high thresholds where they had no competitors, we realised that we did not have sufficient powers to intervene when needed. That is of course one of the reasons for the Bill.
A question was asked about thresholds and when such a provision could be triggered, which is a reasonable question. The two examples I can give are when we had evidence from existing data that there may be an issue with pricing—for example, the reimbursement price that we set in primary care is increasing without an obvious reason—or when there is effectively a bottom-up complaint where patients, clinicians, commissioners or industry raise concerns because it is not obvious what is driving a price rise. I want to minimise the need for future primary legislation on medical supplies pricing controls. The Government should have the ability to intervene, but only when the market is not working well. Whether it is for medicines or medical supplies, it is right that those powers exist but are used only when necessary and proportionately. On that basis, I ask the Committee to agree that Clause 5 stand part of the Bill.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for his response. I also thank him for his consultation and willingness to meet bodies before Report, which I am sure will be very welcome. I understand the first argument, which is that there is a need to ensure consistency in relation to this Bill and the 2006 Act. I fully understand that. I also understand the change from criminal to civil penalties. But we then come to the issue of whether this provision should be in statute at all. The Minister himself has acknowledged that this is a different market, with competitive tendering. It is very competitive. We can see no evidence that this measure has been used for 40 years, and as far as I can see there is no evidence to suggest that it will be used any time soon.
The Minister said that it was not thought that the switch from branding to generics would arise in relation to medicines, and therefore that we should look into a completely different sector and say that because something might happen in the future we need to have this overarching provision in the Bill. But that is not the right approach. It has become clear that there are two courses of action. One is to take this out of the 2006 Act altogether, which at the moment I rather favour. We should not regulate for something that might happen in the mystical future.
I, too, was a better regulation Minister and it was drummed into me that if you do not need it, get rid of it—and if you do not need it, do not legislate in the first place. In his heart of hearts, surely the Minister realises that this is unnecessary. The alternative approach is to take the threshold he suggested and put it in the form of an amendment so that we have some reassurance on the face the Bill that it will not be used inappropriately. Those are two particular options.
In my tour d’horizon, as the noble Lord said, I came across the comments made by the noble Earl, Lord Howe, in 1999 when my noble friend Lady Hayman was taking one of the many health service Bills through your Lordships’ House. The discussion was not about devices but about the PPR scheme, because the then Government had taken powers in relation to prices. The noble Earl, Lord Howe, said that the Government had,
“arrogated to themselves sweeping powers to bring the current voluntary scheme to an end and to control the price of any drug at will. Lower medicine prices are appealing but too much of that will kill the golden goose”.—[Official Report, 9/2/99; col. 118.]
If the noble Earl, Lord Howe, were here arguing for this Bill, I think that he would have reflected that the case had not been made for non-health service medicines to be involved. We need to find a way forward between this stage and Report, otherwise the persuasive argument will be to remove the offending sections from the 2006 Act.
Lord Warner
Perhaps the Minister will consider the Bill’s definition of “medical supplies”. It states that it,
“includes surgical, dental and optical materials and equipment (and for this purpose ‘equipment’ includes any machinery, apparatus or appliance, whether fixed or not, and any vehicle)”.
That seems to take the Government into any bits of kit—not just ordinary devices as we normally understand them. It covers ambulances and all sorts of fixed equipment in the NHS. Is the Minister really saying that the Department of Health needs a power to cover that range of subjects—I presume that it includes scanners—where competitive tendering may be used, and that the Government reserve the right to intervene in that? That is what the Bill seems to say.
Lord O'Shaughnessy
On that specific point, there are number of things—for example, supplements, cosmetics and foods—that fall outwith the categories of health service medicines or health service medical supplies but are sometimes provided or prescribed by the NHS. The intention of the part of the Bill to which noble Lords draw attention is to capture such items when they are provided by the NHS for the benefit of patients—but not in general.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
Perhaps I may continue, my Lords. My noble friend will move an amendment on this later on, but the Bill states:
“‘Health service products’ means any medicinal products used to any extent for the purposes of the health service continued under section 1(1) and any other medical supplies, or other related products, required for the purposes of that health service”.
So it is a draconian regulatory power. Having said that, I think that we have had a very good debate. I am sure that we will come back to this on Report.
“Specials
After section 260 of the National Health Service Act 2006 (control of maximum price of medical supplies other than health service medicines) insert—“260A Specials(1) When commissioning the production of ”specials”, National Health Service clinical commissioning group, hospital trust and community pharmacies must seek no less than three quotes for non-tariff items, at least one of which should be from a National Health Service manufacturer.(2) Unless there are over-riding reasons not to accept it, the cheapest quote must be selected.(3) When setting the tariff price for “specials”, NHS England, in its tariff-setting process, should seek prices from National Health Service, as well as private, manufacturers.(4) For the purposes of this section, a “special” is an unlicensed batch of a medicine prepared or extemporaneously dispensed.””
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff
My Lords, I will now move into a very different area, but one that is integrally related to the Bill: that of “specials”. Concerns relating to specials and obtaining them have been brought to my attention by the British Association of Dermatologists, the Royal College of Ophthalmologists, the Royal College of General Practitioners and others—so the issue goes more broadly than simply dermatology.
Specials are unlicensed medicines manufactured or procured specifically to meet the clinical needs of an individual patient. They may be put on the skin; they may be alternative ways of making a medication that can be ingested when there are swallowing difficulties: for example, in babies fitted with a fine-bore nasogastric tube, and so on. The most frequently prescribed specials are made in small batches, but sometimes there are only one or two patients at any one time in the country who need this particular preparation.
Baroness Walmsley
My Lords, I hope that the Minister will accept the common-sense amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay. The amounts of money that the NHS would save on specials may not be in their billions but, as my granny used to say, “Look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves”. I am sure that other noble Lords will have heard that from a couple of generations back. It seems crazy if there is no opportunity for the Government to stop this. It sounds like exploitation to me and a fairly simple change to the Bill could stop it in its tracks.
Baroness Wheeler
My Lords, we very much support the intention behind this amendment and commend the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, for her determined and dogged campaigning in highlighting this issue and trying to persuade the Government to recognise the problem. In a Bill designed to close loopholes, this is a particularly important one to address. At the same time, it would obviously save the NHS a substantial amount of money. A BBC investigation six years ago estimated a potential saving of £70 million a year just for England, so it is hard to see why the Government should not want to take urgent action now.
We have heard from the noble Baroness, and from the excellent work undertaken on this issue by the British Association of Dermatologists and other organisations, of the overall costs and substantial savings that could be made on unlicensed medicines. Addressing this issue would be to the benefit of the NHS and the many patients in community and primary care who are denied access to special order medicines because of the way in which the current procurement system operates. The anomaly is that if they were in hospital, they would have stood a good chance of being given the drug.
We have also heard how the current system can result in some suppliers charging hyperinflated costs for specials, particularly when chemists do not buy direct from a specials manufacturer but via a wholesaler which adds its costs to the price. This results in the NHS having to pay the chemist the wholesalers’ rather than the manufacturers’ price, because there is no price tariff on the unlicensed specials. Moreover, prices for specials in the primary care sector are set by reference to the Association of Pharmaceutical Specials Manufacturers, which covers private companies that generally manufacture only smaller and therefore much more expensive quantities of drugs. The whole system, which has one much cheaper and cost-effective system for hospitals and another for community and primary care, surely needs to be urgently addressed.
I ask the Minister whether consideration can be given to the Competition and Markets Authority being asked to investigate suppliers. Why have the Government not looked at and learned from the Scottish system, which takes a whole-market approach in the way that the noble Baroness proposes should operate here? We understand that the Government have proposed a six-month review of the existing and proposed arrangements, but we do not feel that this adequately recognises the urgency and scale of the problem. In the Commons, the Minister, Philip Dunne, acknowledged that the Government have existing powers to address the issue, so why is it not being addressed?
The amendment contains the important provision to require NHS England, as part of its tariff-setting processes, to seek prices from the NHS as well as private manufacturers—the whole market—and we fully support this. If the Minister would at last take the important step of recognising and acknowledging the problem, then work could commence on the procurement process required to bring the new system into effect.
Lord O'Shaughnessy
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, for the work that she has put into investigating this issue, for her amendment and, indeed, the intent behind it, which is to save the NHS money and provide a better bang for our buck. That is something that everyone would support.
I say first that it is the Government’s priority to make sure that we get the best possible results for all NHS patients with the resources we have. That is what the Bill, in its entirety, aims to do. This amendment seeks to save the NHS money on specials by requiring CCGs, hospital trusts and community pharmacies to seek no less than three quotes for non-tariff items, at least one of which should be from an NHS manufacturer and, where possible, to select the cheapest quote. It also requires NHS England to take into account prices of NHS manufacturers when setting reimbursement prices. A special is a medicine manufactured or imported to meet the specific needs of a specific patient. By nature they are bespoke, and therefore they do not have the same economies of scale during manufacture and distribution as licensed medicines. Due to the bespoke nature of specials, the costs associated with manufacturing and distribution will never be as low as the often relatively cheap components that make up the special. I say that by way of background for those who are perhaps not as familiar with the subject as the noble Baroness is.
I turn now to the idea of setting tariff reimbursement prices and including data from NHS manufacturers. In England, reimbursement prices for the most commonly prescribed specials are listed in the drug tariff. Those prices are based on sales and volume data, which the department currently obtains from specials manufacturers under a voluntary arrangement. The new provisions in the Bill would make reimbursement data more widely available and more accurate—which would clearly be a benefit in making sure we get value for money with specials. By setting a reimbursement price, we encourage pharmacy contractors to source products as cheaply as possibly because it allows them to earn a margin, which in turn creates competition in the market and, as a result, lowers reimbursement prices. Since these reimbursement arrangements were introduced in 2011, we have observed that, in England, the average cost for specials listed in the drug tariff decreased by 39% between 2011 and 2016.
In setting that out, I do not disagree with the idea that there are instances of wild variation. Indeed, I ask the noble Baronesses, Lady Finlay and Lady Wheeler, for any examples and evidence that they have. I would be keen to see them, to better understand instances where it has happened.
Basing reimbursement prices on selling prices from more manufacturers than we do now, which the Bill would allow us to do, would make our reimbursement system more robust. For specials, we currently rely on information from those manufacturers that have signed up to our voluntary arrangement. There have been talks with NHS manufacturers to provide information on a voluntary basis. However, we have not been successful so far in securing data from NHS manufacturers that we are able to use. The Bill would enable us to get information from all manufacturers, including NHS manufacturers, for the purpose of reimbursing community pharmacies—that being, of course, one of the main aims of the Bill. Once we receive data from NHS manufacturers, we will be able to assess whether it is appropriate to include it in calculating reimbursement prices. We are actively looking to see whether we can include data as part of our reimbursement price setting, and the Bill will help us to get it. Consequently, we do not need the amendment.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff
I am grateful to the Minister for his very full reply, which I intend to study in detail. While he has made several points, I have ongoing concerns about leaving this unaddressed in the Bill. In light of what he said, I still do not understand why some manufacturers quote different prices for Scotland and England. Their production costs are exactly the same, so why are they quoting higher prices for England? It does not make sense. England is then paying a higher price than Scotland.
The dispensing fee that goes to the community pharmacists is the same, irrespective of the price paid. I worry that the bureaucratic burden of the clinical commissioning group refusing to pay for something because it seems inordinately expensive is a short-term view in the interests of immediate budget containment, and does not take a long-term view over the life course of an illness that could be contained by using something specifically designed for that patient so that, in the long term, there could be a decreased cost to the NHS. I remain concerned.
I have absolutely no intention of there ever being delays in accessing things in an emergency, but only where a patient is not in an emergency situation. In the community, the pharmacist often does not have things in stock anyway and has to order them. The patient or their representative has to come back the following day or 48 hours later, when something has arrived. I am not convinced that the bureaucratic burden would be that great. I can see that three quotes may be too many, but an alternative quote might be a way forward. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Lansley
“Price control: exemptions
After section 264 of the National Health Service Act 2006 (statutory schemes: supplementary) insert— “264ZA Price control: exemptionsIn controlling maximum prices of any health service medicines and medical supplies, including amounts payable to the Secretary of State under a voluntary or statutory scheme, the Secretary of State may not set a maximum price in respect of any product for which the cost of that product to the National Health Service has been determined through an open and competitive tender process.””
Lord Lansley
Amendment 16 takes us to an issue that was the subject of consultation prior to the introduction of the Bill: whether the Government should take powers to control prices in circumstances where there has been an open and competitive process—for example, a tender process. We know that one reason why the legislation is required is because it does not follow that because products have become unbranded generic medicines they are necessarily available on a fully competitive basis in the marketplace. We have seen examples of that. In explaining the purpose of the Bill, it was stated that:
“The government’s intention is to use these new powers where due to a lack of competition in the market, companies charge unreasonably high prices for unbranded generic medicines”.
That is understood. There can be circumstances where there is a lack of competition.
Quite clearly, however, there are circumstances where the products available and the prices set are themselves the product of an open and competitive process, such as a tender process; for example, in relation to blood products being supplied to the NHS. There may well be a degree of market dominance in some of those, even though some of the complex medicines may be generic. For example, I know a company that produces medicines in circumstances where it has to use opiates, and the availability of those opiates might be limited.
None the less, if the NHS can procure on the basis of a tender that is open and competitive, why should the Government leap in and try to amend it? I understand that the response to that is to say that companies can take account of the rebate in the prices that they set. But surely when one enters into a tender, the companies concerned may not be in symmetrical positions in relation to the implications of the rebate. Some companies are indifferent to the rebate because they are not affected by it and other companies are affected by it. The nature of the rebate over a period of time and the extent of it may be variable, and they may make completely different assumptions about what that process looks like. So it seems, on the face of it, that a much cleaner approach to the Bill would be exemption from the price control mechanism in those circumstances where clearly the mischief that the Bill is intended to remedy does not apply: that is, in an open and competitive process. I beg to move.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, this is helpful. Medicines have been referred to, but I would have thought that it could be helpful with other medical supplies. I have had a letter from the British Healthcare Trades Association. It says, in relation to other medical supplies:
“We cannot think of any procurement scenario in our sector where products, on an ongoing basis, are not subject to tender or tariff procedures. The price is tested at entry and reviewed at regular intervals, and the terms and conditions pertaining to the contract or tariff arrangements will include requirements for provision of information”.
That deals with the issue of information. So the noble Lord has put forward a very interesting suggestion and I hope that the Minister might be sympathetic to it.
Lord Warner
My Lords, I too am sympathetic to this amendment. I have a linked amendment, Amendment 33, which is about introducing a trigger before information is required. Both amendments, I think, are intended to curb the enthusiasm of Secretaries of State to intervene in a market situation where things are working reasonably well. So I have every sympathy with the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, and I hope that the Minister will consider it sympathetically.
Baroness Walmsley
I too have a great deal of sympathy with the amendment, but I just wonder what the definition would be of an “open and competitive” process—perhaps it would be defined in regulations. Does the noble Lord agree?
Lord Lansley
That is a helpful suggestion. It might not necessarily be defined in regulations, but one might contemplate that the Secretary of State would issue guidance as to what constituted such a process.
Lord O'Shaughnessy
I thank my noble friend for his amendment and am very happy to show sympathy with it, as other noble Lords have done. I will start by stating that the Government’s view is clearly that competition and market forces are the best way of delivering value. Wherever possible, we should ensure that competition is there, that it works and that it involves as many participants as possible. In many instances, that is the way to drive better value. That being the case, my first priority is to look at ways of improving how markets operate, before reaching for the lever of regulation. That principle is guiding our work on the pricing and cost control of medicines and medical supplies.
For that reason, I understand the sentiment behind the amendment. The underlying assumption here is that if the NHS tenders for a product in a competitive market, the tender should always secure the NHS the best possible deal, and that there should be no need for further government intervention. However, while that is the case sometimes, it is not always the case. I will give a couple of examples. The department or the NHS may conduct tenders for a number of reasons, including security of supply. Furthermore, EU procurement rules —of course, that may change in future—which have been implemented into domestic legislation pursuant to the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 mean that, for contracts for products over a certain value, the NHS has to tender such contract opportunities in accordance with the requirements specified in the procurement rules.
Where there is a sole supplier of a particular product, or other factors such as supply or specificity of products apply, a tender exercise in itself is unlikely to result in significantly lower prices. For example, the department has run competitive processes for von Willebrand factor. This is used to treat patients with a genetic deficiency in the quality or quantity of this protein, which causes problems with blood clotting. Although there are six or seven products that may meet our tender specification, they all have a different concentration of von Willebrand factor, so they are not easily interchangeable. This means that, in practice, the suppliers of such products do not compete on price, knowing that clinicians need access to all the products to select on clinical need and that the department will make awards on this basis.
Lord Lansley
I am grateful to my noble friend for his interesting response. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, I want to take it away and think about it. I probably felt kind of comfortable with what my noble friend said in relation to branded medicine. I thought it was specifically in relation to unbranded generic medicines that the issue was, perhaps, most likely to arise. However, I can see that he is identifying circumstances where there might be a tender process, and that the fact of it being a tender does not necessarily mean that it is open and competitive on price. I therefore see why the amendment does not do the job. However, I can still see where there might be a risk, none the less. There might be open and competitive tender situations where the companies concerned feel that they are in subsequent jeopardy that the price that has been determined competitively might be overridden by the powers that are available to Ministers. We just need to see whether, perhaps in further discussion, we can find some way to give companies an assurance that that would not be the case, whether statutorily or otherwise. I would very much value my noble friend’s assurance that we will have that conversation. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Wheeler
Baroness Wheeler
My Lords, this important group of amendments to Clauses 6 and 7 covering England and Wales is intended to reduce the scope of the burdensome information requirements under the Bill by excluding medical technology and supply sectors from its provisions. The Bill itself is inconsistent throughout on how it refers to this key part of the industry, variously referring to the producing of medical supplies, of health service supplies or of health service products. This gives fuel to the widespread assumption that the medical supplies parts of the Bill were a hastily drawn-up afterthought addition to its main purpose.
Our amendments in this group—excluding Amendment 19—remove all references to “health service products” in these clauses and substitute the “health services medicines” reference consistent with the other parts of the Bill applicable to the pharmaceutical industry. Despite extensive questioning and probing of Ministers by noble Lords and in the Commons and today’s explanation from the Minister in our earlier debates we have still to hear any evidence-based justification for these heavy-handed information and disclosure requirements. Both the ABPI and the ABHI have voiced strong concern at the onerous information requirements under the Bill and draft regulations and the potentially huge impact on SMEs across both sectors.
We were encouraged at Second Reading when the noble Lord, Lord Prior, in response to the widespread and deep concerns put forward, told us that,
“the last thing in the world we want to do is to build a bureaucratic edifice … or to gold-plate regulations, information requirements and the like … we are absolutely open to all ideas and suggestions on how we can reduce the regulatory and bureaucratic requirement on companies that supply the NHS”.—[Official Report, 21/12/16; col. 1685.]
Just to remind noble Lords—a point underlined earlier by my noble friend—the Bill currently requires,
“a person who manufactures, distributes or supplies any UK health service products”,
and in England it is applicable to,
“any medicinal products used to any extent for the purposes of the health service continued under”
proposed new Section 264A(1),
“and any other medical supplies, or other related products, required for the purposes of that health service”.
In other words, millions of products and thousands of small, medium, large and very large businesses.
Within Clause 6, information may be required on:
“the price charged or paid by the producer for products … the price charged or paid for delivery or other services in connection with the manufacturing, distribution or supply,”
of those products,
“the discounts or rebates or other payments given or received … in connection with the manufacturing, distribution or supply”,
of those products and,
“the revenue or profits accrued … in connection with the manufacturing, distribution or supply”,
of these products. These are the current draconian provisions and the only response so far to the Government’s insistence that they are open to ideas and suggestions is to promise to consult the medical supplies sector after the legislation has been passed.
We will not go into the issue of the dreaded Section 260 of the 2006 Act, which already contains powers to get price control and information powers over the companies concerned, but we have still to hear a convincing argument as to why it cannot be used as a basis for seeking any further information that is required. We are told that the new provisions clarify, modernise and streamline and now, in the noble Lord’s words, “make the provisions much clearer than they currently are in the 2006 Act”, but Ministers have still to explain exactly how this is the case.
To remind the Committee, the impact assessment makes the astonishing admission that the costs of these provisions have not been quantified for manufacturers, wholesalers and dispensers. Can the Minister tell the Committee whether any further work has been done on this? Surely proposals that stand to impact tens of thousands of businesses should be part of the evidence base before the Government decide to proceed with legislation? It is crucial that the Government accept our amendments and delete the medical supplies industry from the scope of Clauses 6 and 7; only then can they have the meaningful consultations with the industry that should have taken place before the introduction of the Bill. As noble Lords have underlined, it is not acceptable for Ministers to seek to change primary legislation to give the Government new information powers when the details and impact of the new powers will emerge only in future.
Finally, Amendment 19 in this group seeks to address the huge burden that the new information requirements will place on thousands of small businesses across the country. Bearing in mind that the Government have done no work on the potential impact on SMEs, this amendment would at least introduce a threshold limiting the businesses affected to those companies with a total workforce of more than 250 employees or with annual revenues of more than £50 million in each of the preceding three fiscal years prior to the information request. This is based on the EU threshold in relation to procurement. However, given our upcoming withdrawal from the EU, it seems sensible to specify a roughly equivalent amount in pounds. The value of the pound is, of course, currently subject to ongoing fluctuations. If the Government are inclined to act on this amendment, the Minister and his colleagues may wish to give some thought to an exact figure ahead of Report.
The potential impact of the proposed powers on SMEs is significant and could come with a significant unseen cost to domestic businesses and, as a result, to patients. A small firm such as Mediplus, with 55 employees and a turnover of approximately £6.5 million, already has to meet a range of requirements to demonstrate that it is providing value for money. The Bill would increase the time and cost of demonstrating compliance with regulations without any discernible improvement in final outcome. Increasing the bureaucratic burden on SMEs could force firms to consider how they bring products to market, which could have only a negative impact on the NHS and its patients.
The Government have indicated that they would exempt businesses with a turnover of approximately £5 million. The noble Lord will appreciate that, although that sum sounds large, it is very little in comparison with the revenues of the larger pharmaceutical firms which the Bill aims to regulate. The Government’s proposed exemption will still subject a company such as Mediplus to an increased regulatory burden. As noble Lords keep pointing out, all this is completely counterintuitive, given the Government’s supposed commitment to deregulation, and can only risk the viability and innovative streak of very small businesses, which we should be supporting in the current climate. I beg to move.
Lord Warner
My Lords, I have added my name to the set of amendments and strongly support what the noble Baroness, Lady Wheeler, said.
The Minister is new to this legislation. He has joined the party a little late on the Bill. I ask him to stand back and look at some of the terminology used in it. It skips lightly through about four different terms: health service medicines, medicinal products, medical supplies and health service products. It zigzags in and out of those terms throughout the Bill. It then gives a set of definitions at the end which, on the most generous interpretation, overlap with each other. So we are imposing new obligations on a whole set of people in and around the NHS and the pharmaceutical industry without being very clear which group of products we are most concerned about. We are taking powers in the Bill to put obligations on all suppliers of those products to keep a lot of information in case the Government should at some point in future call on them to provide it. That does not seem to me a sound basis on which to legislate when we are trying to reduce the regulatory burden on not just small but medium-sized companies. We always talk about the small companies, but Amendment 19 is useful because it involves reducing the burden on medium-sized companies as well.
The impact assessment then adds to the problem by giving no idea of the impact of these provisions on those companies. At least these amendments narrow the focus to where there is an acknowledged problem—medicinal products—which is where the Bill started. If you read the Long Title, it looks as though it started as a Bill about medicines to which someone has tacked on “and related issues”, or similar words. I suspect that the Bill started off trying to deal with a genuine problem but has grown just in case it might be helpful to have some other provisions. Then, to add unnecessary complexity, it has moved around on what products are to be covered to the point where we are putting obligations on a very large number of organisations in case the Government come calling for information.
That is why I shall return to this subject when we come to Amendment 33, which tries, at the very least, to put some obligation on the Secretary of State to show that he has good reason for requiring the information sought in this Bill. That is a debate for another day, but the Minister should look very carefully at whether the Bill has a confusing set of definitions and a use of words that is going to cause a lot of confusion for the world outside.
Lord O'Shaughnessy
My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their many amendments in this group. They cover two very important aspects of the Bill and I am grateful for the opportunity to provide further clarification.
I will look first at the issue of small and medium-sized enterprises. As noble Lords will understand, the medicines sector is very diverse, with companies ranging from the largest global enterprises with multiple interests to very small companies that manufacture specials on a bespoke basis. The Government have no intention to put unnecessary burdens on companies, and especially not on SMEs. The information that we would require them to keep, record and provide would not be more than companies are currently required to keep for tax purposes. For routine collections, we know that they are not an excessive burden on companies. We heard the director-general of the British Generic Manufacturers Association say at the evidence session for the Bill in the Commons that:
“Providing those data is not a big issue for the majority of our members because it is run from their invoicing system”.—[Official Report, Commons, Health Service Medical Supplies (Costs) Bill Committee, 8/11/16; col. 7.]
For non-routine collections, the illustrative regulations specifically make provision for SMEs, defined here as companies with a UK turnover of less than £5 million, which can provide information in the form of pre-existing information such as invoices. This is the method by which we currently collect information from pharmacies, and we know that the process places barely any burden on them. We will consult the industry on the definition of an SME and will look also at the different definitions—I am aware that multiple definitions are being used across government. We would rely on the information provisions in the Bill to be able to obtain information to operate any price and cost control schemes. This definition of an SME would make it impossible to obtain information from certain companies and, therefore, it would be much harder effectively to operate our voluntary and statutory schemes. The amendment has the effect, therefore, of limiting applications of pricing controls set out in this Bill to large companies only.
We have considered carefully the application of the statutory scheme to small companies. Our consultation last year proposed that the exemption threshold for the new statutory scheme should be set at £5 million of branded health service medicines sales. This maintains the current statutory scheme arrangement and aligns, as we are trying to do throughout the Bill, with the current PPRS. Most industry responses agreed with this proposal, and the illustrative regulations published to aid discussion of the Bill show how it would be incorporated into the operation of the scheme.
It is also important to note that this bespoke definition is focused on the level of sales rather than company turnover, ensuring that only those businesses that make branded health services medicines sales of more than £5 million a year to the NHS will be included in the schemes. On that basis, any company, including those which fall within the EU definition of an SME, will be included in the scheme only if their sales reach this threshold. Not only does this align with the current PPRS and the Government’s broader aims to support SMEs but this bespoke definition ensures that the focus is kept on sales of branded medicines to the NHS. More details are set out in the illustrative regulations for the statutory scheme that have been published alongside the Bill.
There would, however, as a result of this amendment, be additional impacts to the reimbursement of community pharmacies and GP practices, which is one of the core purposes of the Bill, and to the collection of information. Community pharmacies purchase the medicines they supply against NHS prescriptions. The drug tariff sets out a reimbursement price that they will be paid for the majority of medicines. The Government have voluntary agreements in place with manufacturers and wholesalers of unbranded generic medicines and specials. They provide us with information on their prices and volumes, which informs our reimbursement prices. As a consequence of these arrangements, the Government have been able to reimburse community pharmacies more robustly for the products covered by the arrangement.
If SMEs, whether defined as set out in the amendment or under any other definition, were excluded from the requirement to provide information, then not all manufacturers and wholesalers would be included. Reimbursement would be based on large company data alone, with the risk that the prices being paid by small and medium-sized enterprises would not be reflected in the reimbursement prices, to their disbenefit.
In order for the reimbursement system to work effectively, appropriate data are needed from all parts of the supply chain, both large and small companies. If the prices charged by larger companies were generally lower, and these would be the only prices used to inform reimbursement prices, we would be systematically underfunding community pharmacies. This in turn could drive them to purchase products from the large companies only. The effect of this could be that small companies go out of business leading to less competition.
The third purpose for collection of information is for the Government to be assured that adequate supplies of healthcare products are available and on terms which represent value for money. We recognise that this non-routine provision of information is somewhat different from that associated with reimbursement and running our price and cost control schemes, and this is exactly why we have made provisions for SMEs.
I hope that I have assured noble Lords that the burden on SMEs has been considered carefully. We have provided bespoke definitions for both the price control schemes and the information provisions, in order that requirements are placed only on relevant companies for essential information. Broader definitions would risk both the price control schemes and critically the reimbursement mechanisms failing to work as well as they do now, let alone how they could work in the future.
I turn now to the other effect of the amendment, which is to limit application of the information-gathering powers to medicines and remove medical supplies or other related products from the scope of the clause. In response to the noble Lord, Lord Warner, I will look at the use of language and definitions subsequent to our debate today and provide reassurance that that is being done in the appropriate way and not to create confusion.
The 2006 Act gives the Government powers to control the price of medical supplies, as we have discussed at length, to collect information on medical supplies and to take enforcement action in the event of non-compliance. The Bill changes the 2006 Act in relation to medical supplies by reducing the enforcement penalties from criminal to civil, and aligns medical supplies provisions with those for medicines.
Clause 6 of the Bill brings together in one place all of the information requirements underpinning the provisions within this Bill. Without that information the provisions cannot apply to those companies. Removing medical supplies and other related products from this clause would therefore mean that we would not have the necessary information to put in place and operate a price control scheme if we wanted to and take specific action against instances of unwarranted price rises that come to our attention, although I appreciate that noble Lords have concerns that those two things will never happen in reality. Finally, it would impede our ability to put in place more robust reimbursement arrangements for medical supplies provided by community pharmacies for all the reasons that I touched on in the context of small and medium-sized enterprises. That is very important information to have to ensure that reimbursement happens properly.
It is right and proper for the Government to have effective powers to gather information regarding medical supplies and other related products in order to improve our understanding of the costs across the supply chain and ensure that those are providing value for money and that we are properly reimbursing community pharmacies. The medical supplies industry is made up largely of SMEs, and my comments earlier reflect my very real concern to ensure that we ask only for essential information that does not provide an additional burden on such companies. On that basis, I ask the noble Baroness to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Wheeler
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his response. Quite honestly, at this late stage, I will not go into the debates that we have already had on the issue of inclusion of non-medicines in the scope of the Bill or of the burden on SMEs. But it is hard to see from the Minister’s response how the Government can say that they are open to ideas and suggestions on how they will reduce the regulatory burden on the medical supplies industry and particularly on SMEs. The Minister knows that we remain to be convinced on this whole area. I hope that we can have ongoing discussions on this matter before Report. We will certainly return to this issue, but meanwhile, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.